That's Not Syria, CBS

By Isha Aran  |  April 11, 2018 | 7:23pm
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Tensions over the potential American military response to the suspected chemical attacks that left dozens of Syrians dead have never been higher. While Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Wednesday that the U.S. is “still assessing the intelligence” on the attacks, Donald Trump has been on Twitter threatening to bomb Syria and boasting about sending “nice and new and ‘smart’” missiles over. This is an extremely serious situation with potentially devastating consequences—so it may not have been the best time for CBS to mix up Syria and Iran during the CBS Evening News Tuesday night. But that’s what happened.

The sharp-eyed people over at Mediaite noticed that, during Jeff Glor’s introduction to a segment about Syria, a graphic appeared featuring an outline of a country that was presumably Syria. It was not Syria, but Iran, a country that is much larger, differently shaped, and perhaps most importantly, not Syria.

Here is Syria:

Here is Iran:

The graphic seems to have been updated with the correct country on CBS’ YouTube video of the same segment. But even if it’s a seemingly small error that a lot of people wouldn’t catch, it’s still not a great look to mix up Syria and Iran. We reached out to CBS for an explanation of the mixup and will update if we hear back.

 
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