The era of modern media manipulation begins with the appearance of 15-year-old Nayirah al-Ṣabaḥ, a Kuwaiti refugee who told the Congressional Human Rights Caucus a harrowing story about Iraqi atrocities in occupied Kuwait. Nayirah speaks of witnessing Iraqi soldiers taking babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital, stealing the incubators and leaving the babies to die. Amnesty International corroborates the story. It is a front page sensation, with others repeating similar tales.
It turn out that her testimony, representing Citizens for a Free Kuwait, was paid for by the Kuwait government in exile through a contract with Hill & Knowlton, to create an information campaign that would solidify any flagging support for a U.N. resolution authorizing the use of force to eject Iraq from Kuwait. Rick MacArthur revealed in 1992 that Nayirah was really the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S. and that while there were abundant examples of Iraqi war crimes in Kuwait, the incident likely never happened.