Politico is reporting senior State Department and Pentagon officials have begun contacting television network reporters to ask them to stop using “B-roll” — stock footage that appears on screen while reporters and commentators talk — showing ISIL at the peak of its strength last summer.
“We are urging broadcasters to avoid using the familiar B-roll that we’ve all seen before, file footage of ISIL 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 ISIL.
“It’s inaccurate — that’s no longer how ISIL moves,” Horne said. “A lot of that footage is from last summer before we began tactical strikes.”
U.S. officials say ISIL fighters can no longer congregate in daylight or move in large convoys that are easily spotted — and struck — from above.
A more accurate image, said Col. Steven Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, would be “one Toyota speeding down the road by itself at night with its headlights off.”
Horne suggested alternate imagery, including footage of U.S. troops training Iraqi security forces and video of strikes against ISIL targets.
The officials were quick to add that they are sympathetic to the challenge of collecting fresh footage in Iraq and Syria given the extreme danger to reporters there. But they noted that some of the B-roll in use now is drawn directly from ISIL-made propaganda videos.
ISIS has played the needs of television “like a fiddle,” Warren said.
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