The year began on a rough note for the U.S. State Department’s Think Again, Turn Away anti-terror program. On January 1, the State Department used the program’s official Twitter account to tweet a photo collage accompanied by the message, “Entering 2015, taking time to honor some of terror’s many victims of 2014 and their families – RIP.” However, none of the individuals appearing in the photos are believed to be dead, but rather held captive by terrorists.
The tweet, since deleted, appeared as follows, and is archived here:
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The photo collage was part of a feature on December 17 on Al Arabiya New’s English website entitled “Remembering 2014’s captives still held by extremists.” Per the caption on the photo that accompanied the article, those included in the collage (a collection of Reuters, AFP, and YouTube images) are (clockwise from top left): Nigerian school girls, a captive Lebanese soldier’s mother, American journalist Austin Tice, British journalist John Cantlie, and Yazidi women and children.
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The first paragraph of the Al Arabiya article notes:
The State Department’s error was apparently first noted by the Daily Beast‘s senior national security correspondent Nancy Youssef, who tweeted the following two messages to the State Department within a day of the original tweet:
— Nancy Youssef, نانسى (@nancyayoussef) January 2, 2015
— Nancy Youssef, نانسى (@nancyayoussef) January 2, 2015
The morning of January 2, the State Department posted the following two tweets apologizing for the mistake:
— Think AgainTurn Away (@ThinkAgain_DOS) January 2, 2015
— Think AgainTurn Away (@ThinkAgain_DOS) January 2, 2015
A State Department spokesperson replied to an email seeking additional information by repeating the tweeted apology, and then added:
The Think Again, Turn Away campaign has been controversial since its inception in 2014 for its shocking photos of terrorist atrocities. The stated goal of the campaign is to “expose the facts about terrorists and their propaganda” to try to discourage disaffected youth in the Arab world from joining terrorist organizations.
