Two stories posted in the last week on the CNN website, one on nukes in Iran last Wednesday, and another on nukes in North Korea on Saturday, both use the same aerial photograph of the same purported nuclear power plant!North Korea:
Iran:
Look closely—you’ll see one is simply a cropped and enlarged portion of the other image.
Brad thinks there may be something rather sinister going on; I’m not convinced that’s the case, but at minimum, it was a pretty big screw-up. It was exactly images like these that then-Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the UN (and the world) that made our case for invading Iraq—a presentation that convinced many Americans that a war was necessary.
In presenting images ostensibly of the nuclear facilities of Iran and North Korea, the other members of the Bush-designated Axis of Evil, especially directly after a State of the Union address where a war president has vowed to “end tyranny,” one would assume a credible (?) news organization such as CNN would be more conscientious. This isn’t a misidentified picture of the Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, for crying out loud. This is the kind of stuff that informs the public about whether there is a case for war. After the enormity of mistakes that were made last time we found ourselves discussing potential responses to a nation harboring weapons of mass destruction, one would think a bit more care would be taken to avoid mistakes such as these.
Our media has seemingly become patently incapable of doing fair, accurate, and responsible reporting with any degree of competency. It would be laughable, if it weren’t so tragic.
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