The footage of Islamic State vehicles rolling through cities in broad daylight is old, say senior Obama administration officials from the State Department and the Pentagon, and networks should stop playing it.
“We are urging broadcasters to avoid using the familiar B-roll that we’ve all seen before, file footage of [Islamic State] convoys operating in broad daylight, moving in large formations with guns out, looking to wreak havoc,” said Emily Horne, spokeswoman for retired Gen. John Allen, the State Department’s special envoy leading the international coalition against the Islamic State, to Politico.
Horne says the administration wants networks to stop using the footage because “it’s inaccurate — that’s no longer how [the Islamic State] moves. A lot of that footage is from last summer before we began tactical strikes.”
When Horne says last summer, she is referring to August 2015, when the Islamic State suddenly and horrifically entered into Americans’ consciousness with its gruesome videos of beheadings and crucifixions splashed all over social media.
The Islamic State uses its social media prowess and its studio-quality beheading videos to recruit new militants in its war in Syria and Iraq, and to attract the allegiance of other Muslim extremist organizations like Boko Haram.
A more accurate image would be “one Toyota speeding down the road by itself at night with its headlights off,” said Col. Steven Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, to Politico.
The problem is that since the summer, Twitter and Facebook have censored the Islamic State’s social media content and removed graphic videos. Whereas previously journalists could easily find the content on Twitter, now behind-enemy-lines footage is removed almost as quickly as it is put online.
Horne suggests that networks use instead images of U.S. troops training Iraqi security forces and video of strikes against Islamic State targets, which matches the administration narrative that the Islamic State cannot move vehicles and ammunition during the day.
