Fox News Reporter Defends CNN’s Clarissa Ward Against ‘Unfounded and Ridiculous’ Attacks
Fox News’s chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst defended CNN’s chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward Friday after she was accused of faking or being duped into sharing a report in Syria in which she and her crew stumbled across a man abandoned in a Syrian prison.
The man, who she encountered Wednesday, said he had spent days without food or water as the prison was vacated as the country’s long civil war came to an end this past week. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fled his country for sanctuary in Russia. Ward has been reporting from the ground all week and touring now-empty prisons.
After finding the man under a blanket, Ward and her crew took him outside and gave him food and water. Ward shared the segment on X and added, “In nearly twenty years as a journalist, this was one of the most extraordinary moments I have witnessed.”
The credibility of the report was called into question online while Ward was smeared. Ward, who has reported inside Syria for years now, including going undercover in 2014, has won a myriad of awards for her work. CNN’s bio notes that Ward has won “12 Emmy Awards; two George Foster Peabody Awards; two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Awards; two Edward R. Murrow Awards for distinguished journalism; honors from the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association; two David Kaplan Awards from the Overseas Press Club and the 2019 Reporter/Correspondent of the Year Award from The Gracies.”
For someone seeing the sun for the first time in MONTHS, this is not how they act. Light would hurt their eyes, especially if they had been confined in completely darkness. Man, at least pay to have better actors. Did he graduate from Gal Gadot Academy?
— Somii (@abutuesdayy) December 12, 2024
One X (formerly Twitter) community note on a CNN tweet of Ward’s report read, “This is clearly staged. There is no chance a prisoner who was in the darkness can look with wide eyes at the sun. Additionally, his jacket is clean, and he has a new haircut and clean nails, which is not a possible case for Syria’s prisons.”
Some implied Ward might have been duped into stumbling across the prisoner by Syrian rebels.
Yingst jumped to vouch for Ward on Friday.
He tweeted, “The attacks against @clarissaward are unfounded and ridiculous. She is an honest and professional journalist.” Yingst, who was on the ground in Syria as well, reported from inside Syria’s infamous Sednaya prison on Thursday, saying, “To call Sednaya hell on Earth would not do it justice. The English language lacks the word to describe these unimaginable conditions. Crumbling concrete walls are hidden beyond large steel doors. Each space tells a gruesome story of its own.”
Neither CNN nor Ward had responded to the unfounded allegations she was duped as of Friday afternoon.
