White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders tweeted a clearly manipulated video of an exchange between CNN’s Jim Acosta and a young, female White House intern. That prompted several doctored versions to circulate on the Internet as jokes that showed everything from Acosta karate chopping the intern’s arm off to Acosta pulling a knife on her.
Internet mockery of the White House aside, Sanders’ sharing of a manipulated video raises serious questions for how journalists and the public should grapple with seemingly real video content shared by the leaders of the country. Questions that are all the more serious when President Trump himself insists that the video “wasn’t doctored.”
First, lets be clear, the video in question was manipulated. The brief explanation is that the speed of frames were tampered with to make Jim Acosta’s arm movements appear more aggressive. Watching news footage compared with the version shared by the press secretary makes this obvious.
Why Sanders would tweet the manipulated video alongside the statement, “We stand by our decision to revoke this individual’s hard pass. We will not tolerate the inappropriate behavior clearly documented in this video” is also clear. By making Acosta’s actions look more aggressive, the White House feels more justified in revoking his press credentials.
This raises questions not only about the administration, but also about the how the public and the press interact with photos and videos. We’re getting to the point where this sort of thing really can be faked, and the technology is only going to become better. Photos and videos play into our “humanness,” conveying a sense of truth that lacks the element of construction evident in words or a painting. Images seem to be indisputably real, something that you can “witness it with your own eyes.”
Images, however, like written words, are not neutral. Not only does the angle, positioning, lighting, timing, and other cinematic elements change how the image appears to use, but images and videos can also be manipulated. For years there has been an open discussion on the threat of videos that could be altered to the point that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to tell that footage had been manipulated. Security experts have warned that such “deep fakes” could sow public confusion and instill doubt about the truth or worse.
To understand the potency of this threat, imagine a video that seemingly showed the president starting a war, or a key official engaging in sexual misconduct, or a political opponent bribing voters — or perhaps a video showing a voting machine changing votes, playing into fears about election integrity in a close race.
These scenarios are not hard to imagine because some of them have already happened. Indeed, during the election on Tuesday, a video circulated of a voting machine in Ohio that appeared to switch votes. Facebook removed the video, but it still circulated widely on Twitter, even after election officials pointed out that time stamps on the voting receipts in the clip clearly showed the video to be fake.
This time, the video shared about the voting machines as well as that of the exchange with Acosta were easily proven false. Election officials could point to time stamps and there were plenty of other witnesses and cameras during the presser.
And just because it wasn’t sophisticated does not mean that the video was not dangerous. Indeed there are still plenty of people who believe the president’s statement that the video was not doctored and that, as the president often says, reports to the contrary are fake news.
But the clip of the incendiary exchange between Jim Acosta and President Trump will not be the last example of a government relying on doctored or manipulated evidence to support its position. And as conservatives and big government skeptics have often warned, the press and the public must remain vigilant of those who hold office.
