ABC Knob Creek Gun Range Video

Overview

ABC Knob Creek Gun Range Video refers to machine gun shooting footage taken on April 8, 2017 and , at the Knob Creek Gun Range in Kentucky, US, which on October 13th, 2019, was used in an ABC News report to represent the fighting between the Turkish military and the Kurds in Northern Syria. After the true source of the recording was discovered, the network was heavily criticized for airing unverified footage, while some users posted memes showing other fake footage which could be used in a similar manner.

Background

On October 13th, 2019, ABC News' World News Tonight aired machine gun shoot footage taken at Knob Creek Gun Range on April 8th, 2017, and uploaded by Jmac Customs LLC Facebook group on April 9th, 2017,^[2] presenting it as footage of Turkish military launching an assault on a Kurdish border town in Northern Syria.^[1] On the following day, the video was aired on ABC News' Good Morning America (reports shown below).

This video appears to show Turkey's military bombing Kurd civilians in a Syrian border town.

Prior to the erroneous use by ABC, the original video (shown below, top) was previously uploaded to YouTube on January 20th, 2018, by channel Steve Asia as "Afrin YPG destroyed turkish tanks" and was viewed over 17,000 times before being removed from the platform approximately on October 11th. On October 9th, 2019, Twitter user @Vukuzman tweeted the video, claiming that the footage showed an assault on the Kurds by the Turkish military, with the video gaining over 125,000 views on Twitter (shown below, bottom).^[3] On October 11th, 2019, AFP Fact Check reported on the misuse of the video.^[4]

Violents combats cette nuit dans le nord de la #Syrie.
En violation du droit international et avec le soutien de #Trump et de 18000 djihadistes d'#Idlib, la #Turquie a lancé une offensive massive contre les #Kurds, menacés d'annihilation comme les Arméniens.
Honte sur l'#OTAN ! pic.twitter.com/gCMBvxMKlf

— Georges Kuzmanovic (@Vukuzman) October 9, 2019

Notable Developments

On October 13th, 2019, video researcher Wojciech Pawelczyk tweeted a video comparing the footage aired by ABC News with another video of the April 2017 night shoot,^[5] with the comparison video gaining over 1.8 million views in five days and the tweet receiving over 22,100 retweets and 38,900 likes in two days.

Wow! ABC News is trying to pass gun range videos as combat footage from Syria pic.twitter.com/zfTWtwwSfZ

— Wojciech Pawelczyk 🇵🇱🇺🇸 (@PolishPatriotTM) October 14, 2019

On October 14th, 2019, Washington Examiner journalist Becket Adams reported on the supposed misuse of the video, quoting Pawelczyk's tweet, and providing an analyzis of the comparison videos and concluding that the footage shows the same event.^[1] After being reached out to by the journalist, ABC News confirmed that the footage was mispresented and took down the reports which included it.

We’ve taken down video that aired on World News Tonight Sunday and Good Morning America this morning that appeared to be from the Syrian border immediately after questions were raised about its accuracy. ABC News regrets the error.

Online Reactions

On October 14th, 2019, Twitter user @hisspeedtim2876 tweeted the comparison video made by Pawelczyk, with the video receiving over 900,000 views in one day.^[7] On the same day, Redditor jonbristow posted a GIF based on the video to /r/gifs subreddit, where it gained over 141,000 upvotes in one day.^[6] A repost to /r/mildlyinfuriating gained an additonal 13,300 upvotes.^[8]

On October 14th, American alt-right news host and conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec tweeted a meme parodying the misuse of the video with a scene from 2019 film Avengers: Endgame, gaining over 500 retweets and 1,400 likes in one day.^[9][8] In the following hours, more Twitter users posted similar memes (examples shown below).^[10][11]

Search Interest

External References