The Daily Sandwich

"We have to learn the lesson that intellectual honesty is fundamental for everything we cherish." -Sir Karl Popper

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Location: Boston, Massachusetts, United States

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Monday, February 14, 2005

CNN bungles report of nukes in Iran/North Korea

This is pathetic. I'd expect it from the administration, but.... no, I take that back. It doesn't even surprise me coming from today's news media:

Two stories posted in the last week on the CNN website, one on nukes in Iran last Wednesday, and another on nukes in North Korea on Saturday, both use the same aerial photograph of the same purported nuclear power plant!

But one is supposed to be in Iran and the other is supposed to be in North Korea!

A story posted Saturday to CNN's website suggesting that North Korea is rallying behind their leader Kim Jong Il in his latest nuclear saber-rattling makes use of a satellite photo described in the caption as "An aerial photo of North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear plant outside of Pyongyang".

The photo is the third in a "slide show" at this CNN page. Hit 'Next' two times in the "slide show" and the following photo with caption will appear:

[Visit Brad Blog for the photo]

Oddly enough, last Wednesday the CNN website ran a story on nuclear weapons in Iran with an image captioned "Satellite image of a suspected Iranian nuclear-related facility".

That CNN page is here. The photo from that story is below:

[Visit Brad Blog for the photo]

Look familiar? Look very closely at both pictures if it doesn't.

In truth, if this wasn't so sad (and actually somewhat frightening) the irony of the sub-title for CNN's Iran story -- "Former weapons inspector: 'It's déjà vu all over again'" -- might be somewhat amusing. In the piece, U.S. chief weapons inspector David Kay is quoted urging the U.S. "not to make the same mistakes with Iran that he said it made with Iraq".