CNN's Alibi Hasn't Seen the Raw Tape, and Won't Produce It

Today I contacted Paul Martin, the co-owner of World News and Features whom CNN cited in their claim that Ashraf Masharawi's video of his brother's death in a Gaza hospital emergency room as the result of being fired upon by an Israeli drone was indeed legitimate as shown, and not staged as many right of center bloggers have contended.

I asked Mr. Martin a series of questions about the video, including queries about the apparent inconsistencies in the timeline in various versions as told presented by CNN and Channel 4 as noted by Dan Riehl, and why the family was so adamant that an Israeli drone fired a missile that targeted the two boys playing on the rooftop. Did the family members directly witnessed a drone firing a missile, or did they hear the explosion, go to the roof, see a drone, and assume it was a drone that fired?

I also asked Martin, who is in the business of selling news footage, if CNN and Channel 4 were clients, and if so, if they purchased the edited versions of this Masharawi video, or if they purchased the raw footage to be made into a finished product by these news organizations.

Martin responded this evening via email that:

We plan to post the entire unedited videotape of the whole event, on our website, as soon as we can obtain the whole thing from Gaza... something which can happen when there is an end to hostilities.

There you have it, folks. CNN's alibi hasn't seen the unedited footage, and we can't expect to have them even attempt to provide it until the conflict is over.

Interesting, isn't it?

World News and Features claims to specialize in getting footage delivered from high-threat combat zones to the world's media organizations, and their ace videographer managed to get polished, edited footage of his brother's death in the hands of foreign media organizations within hours of the attack, but now they say we'll have to wait until the war is over to get the kind of raw footage that one would think is their bread-and-butter product.

Fishy?

You don't know the half of it...