Re: CNN USING 1991 FOOTAGE of celebrating Palistinians

   Counterpunch on Friday took off these allegations from their website. No
retraction, though! From what I was able to find, from a Brazilian academic
posting on Indymedia in Israel with nada sourcing this spread like wildfire
over the net.
  This, and a previous incident when
commercials for a 15 part documentary by a cable news network in Qatar on
Lebanon in the 80's that had disrespectful footage of a shoe over as picture
of Arafat resulted in a brief shutdown of the office in the PA of this
network, made this story implausible to me. Granted, only about 2,000 Hamas
miliants in Nablus were celebrating but, spreading this tale with no
substantion all over made lefties look foolish.And, I find it easy to
understand why some Palestinians, would exult that the prime supporter of
their repressors, got hit on the 11th.
Michael Pugliese
  http://worldtribune.com/wta/Archive-2001/me_palestinians_09_13.html
Palestinian Authority threatens camera crews covering celebrations

Special to World Tribune.com
MIDDLE EAST NEWSLINE
Thursday, September 13, 2001
RAMALLAH — The Palestinian Authority has muzzled coverage of Palestinian
celebrations of the Islamic suicide attacks against the United States.

Palestinian sources said PA officials stopped several television crews from
broadcasting Palestinian celebrations of the suicide jet crashes in New York
and Washington. They said PA Information Minister Yasser Abbed Rabbo and his
aides telephoned foreign broadcast crews and said the PA would not be able
to guarantee their safety if the footage is broadcast.

The sources said Fatah agents loyal to PA Chairman Yasser Arafat warned
Palestinian cameramen to either hand over their videotape or refuse to relay
footage of Palestinian celebrations for international broadcast.

The result, the sources said, is that virtually all television crews failed
to broadcast the tape of the celebrations. They said this includes PA
officers and Fatah gunmen in the West Bank firing in the air to celebrate
the kamikaze attacks. The wildest celebrations were reported in Nablus.

In Ramallah, Fatah gunmen captured a Palestinian television cameraman who
worked for a major news agency. The gunmen warned he would be killed if the
footage filmed of Palestinian celebrations is aired.

For his part, Arafat has expressed outrage over the attacks. On Wednesday,
Arafat donated blood for the victims of the U.S. suicide missions.

At the same time, Abbed Rabbo appealed to Palestinians not to publicly
display happiness over the attacks in the United States. The information
minister told PA radio that such expressions would harm Palestinian
interests.

Television journalists refused to publicly acknowledge the pressure. They
said most of the Palestinian celebrations were broadcast.

"We are doing our work as well as we should," Connie Mus, a former chairman
of the Foreign Press Association, said.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/15
/DD87194.DTL
>...Another story was making the rounds of the Internet. It's that CNN's
footage of Palestinians celebrating the terrorist attack was actually
10-year- old archival footage, unrelated to Tuesday's tragedy.

The allegations are untrue, a CNN spokeswoman said yesterday. She said the
Associated Press and Reuters had supplied the footage to CNN and that it was
fresh, taped Tuesday.