Naomi Wolf: Media ‘Distorts’ My Questions About ISIL Beheading Videos

Naomi Wolf== The New York Premiere Screening of the Second Season of FINDING YOUR ROOTS== MoMA, New York== September 16, 2014== Photo-JIMI CELESTE/patrickmcmullan.com== (PatrickMcMullan.com via AP Images)
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Journalist and author Naomi Wolf insisted in a letter to the news media Monday that she does not believe videos of Islamic State militants beheading American and British hostages were “staged.”

“I am not asserting that the ISIS videos have been staged,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “No one can yet know anything for sure about the ISIS videos as they have simply not been independently analyzed, according to the news outlets which we have contacted for more information about the verification process.”

A number of news sites, including TPM, picked up Wolf’s Facebook posts from over the weekend in which she argued that the beheading videos could not be taken as accurate without independent verification. In one post that was later deleted, Wolf wrote that while the hostages may have truly been abducted, “it takes five people to stage an event like this — two to be ‘parents’ — two to pose for cameras..one in a ninja outfit….and one to contact the media that does not bother checking who ANY Of these other four people are.”

“I certainly sincerely apologize if one of my posts was insensitively worded,” Wolf wrote in Monday’s post. “I have taken that one down. But that does not mean I don’t stand by the need for all journalists to have two independent sources confirming a major story before they release it as confirmed.”

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