Al Jazeera removed a story published on Thursday that said the videos of ISIS beheading American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff were “unconvincing,” according to Al Arabiya.
The outlet issued a statement on Saturday apologizing for the story and explaining why it was taken down.
“In respect to families of the victims and as we share their grief, Al Jazeera Arabic’s website decided to retract an inaccurate article that questioned the legitimacy of Foley and Sotloff’s beheading videos after a theory surfaced on a number of American social media sites claiming they were produced as a pretext ahead of a US invasion of Syria,” Al Jazeera’s managing director, Yasser Abu Hilalah, said in the statement. “We want to take this as an opportunity to reiterate Al Jazeera previous position in condemning the kidnapping of the two journalists and condemning their killing as a heinous crime.”
In the article, Al Jazeera claimed that Foley likely created the video himself.
“Foley was playing the role of champion not the victim only, for he recites a lengthy statement in peerless theatrical performance, and it seems from tracking the movement of his eyes that he was reading a text from an autocue,” the story read, according to Al Arabiya.
The piece also said that the jihadist who murdered Foley didn’t “have the features of common jihadist figures, but he was rather similar to a Hollywood actor.”
The Al Jazeera report detailed why the murder looked fake, cast doubt on whether Foley actually appeared in the video and questioned whether Foley was actually ever captured by ISIS.
American WooWoo Conspiracy theorists strike again
How much blood is necessary for people to believe in the brutality of ISIS?
How much?
C’mon al Jazeera or anyone else on social media. All you truthers out there.
HOW MUCH BLOOD DO YOU NEED TO SEE TO BELIEVE ISIS DOES WHAT THEY SAY THEY DO??
The Muslim world is the land of conspiracy theories. Somehow everything ends up being the fault of the CIA or “The British”. Not that it isn’t sometimes their fault, but this sort of nonsense is embarrassingly stupid.
I’m nearly as alarmed by the apology as I am by the initial decision to publish the story.
The first consideration should whether the story is accurate, not whether it’s publication might offend someone. Accurate news will always offend someone. A news network shouldn’t be engaged in approving/condemning actions - it should just report the news accurately. Here they published trash - they should have known it was trash at the get go, and they published it anyway. And it’s no defense to come back and say they condemn what was done to Foley.
Maybe We as a country SHOULD question what is what. The America people are so easily fooled . Odds are the story was the truth and the powers that be does not want it out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey9tExYbjm8This video explains a lot and if you are over the age of 30 you will remember the history of this video.