Discussion: Al Jazeera Pulls Story Suggesting ISIS Videos Of Foley, Sotloff Were Fake

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Discussion for article #227350

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“…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,…”

American WooWoo Conspiracy theorists strike again

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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??

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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.

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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.

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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.
This video explains a lot and if you are over the age of 30 you will remember the history of this video.

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I’m wondering whether it was put up as a news story or an opinion piece.  If it was a column, it would be bad, but hardly surprising - even AJE has a huge amount of conspiracy-laden garbage among their contributed pieces. If it was a news story, that would be really bad. I’ve heard that AJA is quite different from AJE.

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I don’t believe much from any source anymore. What’s that old saying, believe nothing you hear and half what you see…that’s where I’m at today. I will always believe that our government was involved in Kennedy’s death and in the entire 911 show and tell. Today, no matter who is elected, the big money folks are running things…that’s why the border is open…big money WANTS the cheap labor and so it stays open. Big money wants war…and the dollars that come from it. Even if they have to create a ‘cause’ they will. Kill people? No problem…our CIA does it all the time. No biggy.

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That video told me zero I did not know. And it actually reinforces the fact that ISIS beheaded those journalists. If you don’t think there are a lot of people in the Middle East pissed off at the USA, you are tripping. And many of those people are ruthless, like ISIS.

And I have no problem with targeted hits against them.

I’ve been hearing conspiracy theories about the upcoming war with Iran for over 10 years now. Still has not happened. This conspiracy nonsense gets old after a while. I’m sure you are a bin Laden “deather” and 9/11 “Truther” too, and those are basically cult followings detached from reality.

Interesting how you can see the bad things the US has done (and we have), but be blind to the bad things done by others against us.

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For me, the most important thing to assessing a country is how free is its press. Any country that cannot allow its press to scrutinize it, and withstand even unfair scrutiny, cannot be trusted as much as a country with a free press. Even If the policies of a country seem abhorrent at times, the existence of a free press tells me that its rules accept that their tenure is not unlimited, and their actions open to exposure and questions, and that is the best check on their behavior. I do not watch it, so I wonder if Al Jazeera was allowed to report on the allegations, that appeared in papers like the New York Times, that the recent war in Gaza lasted so long because Al Jazeera’s owner— Qatar— told Hamas the money would stop if it allowed Egypt, and not Qatar, to broker the peace, and only the loss of homes of wealthy Gazans in the last few days made even that threat less threatening.

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Why is pulling the story news?

This is not a MAN BITES DOG story.

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I understand Alex Jones is on a broken field run cross country screaming, "Obama is after me with drones ~huff puff…huff puff!~ Gotta’ get to FOX studios! I have absolute proof the beheadings were ‘black flag’ operations run right out of the White House basement!!! ~ huff puff! huff puff! huff puff!~ "

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Because it wasn’t noticed by the American press until notice of the article, and almost simultaneously the retraction, was published on the English channel of Al Arabiya. Funny how it didn’t seem to be a problem for Al Jazeera when it was only in Arabic.

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AJ wrote:

. . . 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."

Retyping Facebook and Twitter-based conspiracy theories is not journalism, fncktards.

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I can understand why there’s some doubt about the video.

The most complete version I could find on the web has a fade out just as the guy in black starts sawing on Sotloff’s neck. “The Walking Dead” has more convincing beheadings than that.

IS there a version that shows the head actually being removed?

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At least Al Jazeera pulled the story. I see too many inaccurate stories carried by websites on the far right and even a few websites on the far left that never get pulled.

Then again, there’s The John Birch Society and their belief for over 50 years that the UN blue helmets are going to show up any second now and take over the country. Sometimes we need reminders of the flawed thinking that drive any number of movements.

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*t’s an evil irony that the dying legacy press let the administration get away with the Foot Hood “workplace violence” meme. It looks like some of their own are suffering from workplace violence. That’s the thing about Karma!

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the national press is made up of idiots. you have your regulars fear mongers spouting their usual 3rd world idiots are going to come to America and kill us (all the while support every gun toting legislation you can muster). however no one in the press ever ask gov’t officials - why are you spying on millions of americans vs developing a plan to monitor every person that comes to the u.s. from the middle east ie crazyland. is anyone curious why you need to break the constitution and spy on americans but don’t have a plan in place to monitor people coming from crazyland

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I used to indulge Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists because I thought it was harmless. I was wrong.

These conspiracy theories are destroying the world from anti-vaxxers to the morons in Alabama who killed an award winning land use development plan because they believe Agenda 21 is a UN conspiracy to take away guns and property rights.

Conspiracy theories are where the left and right overlap. It’s worse in the Arab world because it prevents them from taking any responsibility.

Enough lies, the Arab body politic created the ISIS cancer

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Well we do know a bunch about ISIS so why would Al J think that video was a fake. And where was ISIS when it came out? I think they would have used that fakery to their advantage.

That was a naive piece. Cynicism is not wisdom.