The New York Times editorial board continues leading the campaign against “doctored videos” that it swears are a threat to the republic, but the paper might want to try some self-reflection first.
“It is disturbing enough that American democracy is being threatened by disinformation, the proliferation of which is facilitated by the shadier side of modern technology — phony websites, social-media bots, manipulated video and audio, digitally fabricated ‘deepfakes,'” the editorial board huffed on Thursday. “How painful to be reminded that among the bad actors spreading such chaos and division are prominent elected officials sworn to serve the public.”
The offense in question is a video shared online by Republican Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, wherein his office highlighted a perfectly contextualized interview by a Democratic activist and Joe Biden, who was asked in the exchange to affirm he believed that funding for police could be redirected to social services. “Yes, absolutely!” replied an enthusiastic Biden.
President Trump and Republicans have rightfully been using this clip as proof placing Biden on the record siding with the liberal movement to defund the police.
The supposed controversy is that the video was edited to make it appear that the questioner actually said “for police,” when he actually hadn’t. But though this means nothing. The context of the conversation was in fact about the police and the push by Democrats to limit money that goes to the police and instead to dump it into dubious social programs. This is no different than when journalists, in print, use brackets to show what a pronoun is referring to and to clarify and contextualize the quote of an interview subject. That happens all the time, including in the pages of the New York Times.
What do you suppose would happen if we told the New York Times editorial board that it could no longer paraphrase?
This isn’t about a “doctored video.” This is about the media continuing its cleanup effort for Biden, who has been very clear that he takes the side of the Black Lives Matter protesters and rioters, who believe the police do more harm than good.
“Mr. Scalise’s team, [made] it seem as though Mr. Biden was expressing direct support for defunding the police — something he explicitly opposes, no matter how loudly Republicans claim otherwise,” read the article in the New York Times, which hopefully won’t sue me for the brackets. “Mr. Biden’s criminal justice plan, in fact, includes $300 million in additional funding for police departments.”
That’s another laughable claim. Biden’s does not believe in committing more money to police departments. He believes in tying more funding to a laughable set of qualifications that could never be met.
If the New York Times really believes that it’s wrong to produce a video that accurately captures the essence of a moment of major political consequence, it should admit that it also believes in limiting free speech.
