Yesterday, CNN published an article stating:

In an article published Sunday in her communist newspaper, Il Manifesto, Giuliana Sgrena wrote, “Our car was driving slowly,” and “the Americans fired without motive.”

About 15 minutes after I pointed out that Sgrena’s Il Manifesto article said no such thing, CNN quietly removed the fabricated quote and replaced it with this:

In an article published Sunday in her communist newspaper, Il Manifesto, Sgrena also described a “rain of fire and bullets” in the incident.

CNN neither mentioned the change nor provided an explanation as to how the erroneous quote appeared in the article in the first place.

I thought that was the end of it, but this morning I learned that the fabricated quote is back! Bob K., the reader who brought this matter to my attention yesterday, points to this article, published yesterday at 3:32 pm EST. The article reads in part:

CNN’s Rome Bureau Chief Alessio Vinci said that in various interviews Sgrena disputed the U.S. account that the car was driving fast and warning shots were fired.

She wrote in her paper that “our car was driving slowly” and that “the Americans fired without motive.”

Oops!

We know the quotes didn’t come from Sgrena’s Il Manifesto article, despite CNN’s repeated assertions.

So where do the quotes come from? According to this article, Sgrena’s driver that said he was driving slowly:

According to Italy’s leading daily Corriere della Sera, the driver, an unidentified Italian agent, said: “We were driving slowly, about 40-50 km/h (25-30 mph).”

Maybe CNN has simply gotten Sgrena confused with her driver. If so, it’s not a hanging offense, but I don’t think it’s too much to expect CNN to note its error and stop repeating it.

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