A bunch of folks have been sending in variations on this story about how the UK’s ITV’s new “investigative current affairs” program broadcast a special about Gadaffi and the IRA… but used video game footage of ARMA 2, which came out a couple years ago. The YouTube video included in that story at RockPaperShotgun has been taken down, but another version over at the Telegraph has another version of the video:

The video footage claims to be “the terrorists’ own footage” from 1988, but seems pretty clearly to be video game footage rather than live action.

As for how it happened, ITV claims that it really did have legitimate footage, but somehow got mixed up:

“The events featured in Exposure: Gaddafi and the IRA were genuine but it would appear that during the editing process the correct clip of the 1988 incident was not selected and other footage was mistakenly included in the film by producers,” he said.

“This was an unfortunate case of human error for which we apologise.”

Of course, there’s a pretty obvious reason why the mistake was made. A search on YouTube turns up the same footage labeled as a P-IRA attack on a British helicopter in 1988… just like the ITV report claimed:

Of course, mistakes happen, but when it’s from an investigative reporting unit, it sort of makes you wonder…

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