Last week, CNN ran a segment showing correspondent Clarissa Ward helping free a man locked in one of recently-deposed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s notorious prisons. According to the report, the man had been imprisoned in a dark cell for months, and had not received food or water for four days. The scene was heart-rending as the man, trembling, was held up by a Syrian rebel on the one side and Ward on the other.

The two led him, limping and praising God, to a chair so he could rest. He clutched Ward’s hand tight, saying he had been beaten by Assad’s henchmen. Later, she would call it “one of the most extraordinary moments [she’s] witnessed” in two decades as a journalist.

Yet it took only days for a “Syrian fact-checking group” to reveal the prisoner was not who he said he was. Days after the video was published, Ward posted that CNN had been able to confirm the man’s name is Salama Mohammad Salama. But, as Community Notes pointed out, she failed to include crucial context: Salama was an Assad regime Syrian Air Force Intelligence Officer, particularly known for his use of torture.