Among other rumors that spread like wildfire on the Internet after the 9/11 attacks was that CNN’s footage of Palestinians in East Jerusalem celebrating the attacks was actually 10-year old footage of an unrelated event.
The footage actually came from Reuters, and CNN has a brief statement debunking the claim that the footage was not genuine which tracks the origins of the rumor to an e-mail post made by a student in Brazil.
Meanwhile, there’s been only limited coverage of the fact that after the initial broadcast of Reuters’ footage of the Palestinian celebration was aired, that other camera crews received thinly veiled threats that the Palestinian Authority would not be able to guarantee their safety if the footage ever made it onto American telvision news stations, which is why CNN kept showing the same footage over and over again, though there were in fact a number of similar celebrations in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority.