The Donald Trump administration uses a video of the plot site to justify the ban of a CNN reporter

By Michael M. Grynbaum and Elizabeth Williamson


The Trump Administration relied on a misleadingly edited video by a contributor to the Infowars plot site to justify the withdrawal of the correspondent's powers in White House leader at CNN, a striking escalation of President Donald Trump's sides against the press.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House press secretary, falsely accused CNN journalist Jim Acosta of "getting her hands on a young woman", a White House trainee, while Acosta asked questions that irritated the president during an official announcement. conference Wednesday.

TV shows showed Acosta and the trainee had made a brief, benign contact – "Forgive me, ma'am," said the correspondent, as she tried to pick up a microphone at Trump's request .

But Sanders posted on Twitter a 15-second video clip that incorrectly suggested that Acosta had pushed the trainee's arm. The clip was identical to the one previously posted by Paul Joseph Watson, a contributor to Infoway, according to a forensic badysis done by The New York Times.

"We will not tolerate inappropriate behavior clearly documented in this video," wrote Sanders.

Infowars, which has been banned by platforms like Twitter and Facebook, is known. We will not tolerate this behavior … https://t.co/xLP6P2Mm9k. for spreading conspiracy theories, including the one invoked by its founder, Alex Jones, that mbad shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax. Sanders – who has already encouraged Americans to watch the work of James O'Keefe, a right-wing activist, "be it right or not" – refused to say Thursday why she had distributed the video of his official account to the White House.

"The question is: did the reporter make contact or not?" Said Sanders in a statement. "The video is clear, he did it."

There is no evidence that the video was falsified. But editing, including zooming in and repeating multiple images, has exaggerated the contact between Acosta and the internals. The low quality of the video, which crashes briefly either deliberately or as a result of a glitch, adds to the ambiguity, the badysis revealed.

The removal of the powers of Acosta, which limits its access to the west wing and its staff, has little precedent for the modern White House. Former presidents clashed with Frankish journalists like Sam Donaldson and Helen Thomas, but did not restrict their access.

Still, the gesture against Acosta, a frequent antagonist known to have challenged the president at press conferences, was not totally a surprise.

In 2016, Trump banned journalists from Univision, the Washington Post, BuzzFeed News and Politico from attending his meetings. As president, he popularized the terms "enemy of the people" and "false information" and threatened to withdraw broadcast licenses and amend defamation laws to facilitate prosecution.

The daily press briefing of the White House has slowly disappeared. In July, a CNN reporter was ruled out of a Rose Garden event because White House badistants said she had asked questions too aggressively.

Trump and his political team no doubt know that Acosta is a useful foil. "CNN sucks!" Is a common slogan at the president 's rallies, and there are few political drawbacks for the administration to limit access to one of the network' s star correspondents. . This decision is likely to offend Trump's opponents, to support his supporters and to have little or no effect on those who are on the winning balance.

And, as with most Trump things, nothing was cut and dried.

The timing was right: Acosta's letter of credit was rescinded a few hours after the dismissal of his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, and had to explain a difficult mid-term election that left control of his opponents Democrats in the House. Political strategists have observed that a press freedom controversy, initiated by the White House, would be a useful ploy to divert the attention of journalists and perhaps the public.

Then come the actors: a showman president and an ambitious television correspondent in the honor.

Some members of the press at the White House sometimes look at Acosta, who wonders if his aggressive questions are intended less to extract information from Trump than to create a show ready to photograph. "Most of those present were serious journalists who were asking serious questions," said Chris Wallace, moderator of "Fox News Sunday," at Wednesday's press conference. "But Jim Acosta, I thought, was embarrbaded himself."

Dozens of other journalists opposed this view, offering public support. Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan has urged CNN to sue the White House on the first amendment.

The action against Acosta also took place shortly after the discovery of a homemade bomb at CNN headquarters in New York. The suspect arrested in the case, Cesar Sayoc Jr., had been photographed at a Trump rally holding an anti-CNN sign, and authorities found a "CNN Sucks" sticker on his van.

At Infowars, the imprimatur of the White House was a welcome evolution.

The site has lost some of its audience since being banned by several major online platforms this summer, including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the Apple App Store. Watson, who has made himself known on the site, has retained his social networks and his YouTube accounts, thus offering Jones one of the last ways to reach a mainstream audience.

The video tweeted by Sanders shows that Acosta establishes a strong and sustained contact with the arm of the intern. The Infowars video also has no sound, so Acosta's "forgiveness" is not heard.

"If you look at original and better videos from other points of view, you can see more clearly that even if there was a contact between the journalist and the trainee, he did not Did not hit when his hand fell, "Hany said. Farid, an expert in forensic science at Dartmouth College who badyzed the clip for The Times.

The press conference was broadcast on the major cable companies, including the C-SPAN public affairs network, which means that it had other options than using a clip created by a contributor to a notorious site.

Infowars seized the ad that accompanied the use of the clip by Sanders, posting inflammatory articles under headlines such as "Did Jim Acosta Assault a Woman?" Jones did not respond to a message left on his cell phone. Watson, based in Britain, did not respond to requests for comment.

In a video interview published Thursday on Infowars, Watson acknowledged to Jones that the clip included what he called "digital artifact problems."

"I have browsed it as three different programs and have uploaded it back to Twitter, agree?" Watson said. "It's not special. The doctoring consists in deliberately changing the footage. He added: "The media has invented a conspiracy theory to distract attention from Acosta's behavior. Sarah Sanders was absolutely right to publish this authentic video. This proves that Acosta has put his hand on the woman to control her. "

"You're right, Paul, he's mastered a woman," Jones said.

Acosta did nothing of the sort. On Thursday, the White House News Photographers Association said it was "dismayed" that the White House had distributed the Infowars clip.

"As visual journalists, we know that manipulating images, is manipulating the truth," the group said in a statement. "It's deceptive, dangerous and unethical. Sharing knowingly manipulated images is also problematic, especially when the person sharing them is a representative of the highest office in our country, who has a great influence on public opinion. "

Trump has made CNN one of its flagship targets. In the summer of 2017, he used the @realdonaldtrump and @POTUS accounts to share a 28-second video that showed that Trump himself was struggling violently against an opponent with the CNN logo. "#FraudNewsNetwork," commented the president.

CNN President Jeff Zucker recently criticized Trump for his ruthless language, calling his anti-press speech a danger to journalists. On Wednesday, the network said that the White House's retaliation against Acosta was a "threat to our democracy".