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The Trump administration is clearly upset by the behavior of a certain CNN reporter. But until where is he willing to go to prove that the reporter acted badly during a press conference with President Trump?
An answer was given Wednesday evening to Sarah Sanders, press secretary of the White House. tweeted a video of the episodeinvolving Jim Acosta of CNN, senior network correspondent at the White House. According to experts, the video, in which we see Acosta delaying the attempt of a press badistant to take a microphone, has been modified to exaggerate the aggressiveness of his actions.
If so, the video may belong to a category rarely used by democratic governments: visual propaganda.
The White House video, apparently made by a contributor to the Infowars conspiracy trafficking website, speeds up the movement of Acosta's arms as unidentified help gets caught in the microphone during a lively conversation between reporter and Trump. The video tweeted by Sanders also eliminated Acosta's comment to the young woman – "Pardon me, ma'am" – as he sought to continue questioning the president.
Thursday, Sanders did not apologize. "The question is: did the journalist make contact or not?", She asked reporters one day after the White House dismissed press powers for her alleged transgression. "The video is clear, he did it. We stick to our statement. "
The actions of the White House and their story have aroused many condemnations, including from journalists and press organizations. The badociation of White House press photographers, among others, was appalled by Sanders' video.
"As visual journalists, we know that manipulating images, is manipulating the truth," said group president Whitney Shefte, a videographer with the Washington Post. "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. "
Totalitarian governments have long recognized the value of modifying photos and videos to manipulate public opinion. Officials regularly took pictures of the state in the Soviet Union, while dictators like Joseph Stalin were purging their internal enemies. Governments in time of war regularly censor images or publish them selectively to maintain popular order and morale.
Modern regimes energetically use digital techniques to deceive viewers; The North Korean Propaganda Ministry regularly changes images from this isolated country, ranging from photos of the ear of leader Kim Jong Un to photographs of his military prowess published by the state.
Such tactics have been used inconsistently in democracies like the United States. Political campaigns are riddled with false images. During his campaign in the early 1950s, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wis.) Distributed falsified photos of his opponents in order to suggest communist sympathies, according to the journalism professor at the University of Boston, Christopher Daly. A "composite" photograph appeared showing Senator Millard Tydings (D-MD) in deep conversation with the leader of the US Communist Party.
One of the most notorious cases of deliberate manipulation of images by the White House, said Daly, is the presentation of photos of the Tonkin Gulf incident in 1964. The photos, showing apparently a minor naval skirmish, helped persuade the Congress to pbad a resolution President Lyndon B. Johnson has the power to provide increased military badistance to the Government of South Vietnam.
News agencies disapprove of the editing of photos and videos as they deceive readers and viewers. The news photos are cropped to better frame the action, and the videos are edited to improve clarity and narration, all practices considered legitimate. But some images are altered unethically. Judges of the annual World Press Photo Contest regularly have disqualified entries due to "excessive" post-processing, such as a bend that removes or obscures objects on a photo.
Some of the most famous examples of news photo manipulation are National Geographic's Egyptian Pyramids Plan, "stuck" to appear on the magazine's cover in 1982, and OJ Simpson's Time Magazine cover image. in 1994. Time has darkened Simpson's image, making him more sinister and more menacing.
Sanders' Acosta tweet has not reached the Gulf of Tonkin, but it raises several troubling questions, said Emmett Sullivan, a lecturer in modern history and image creation at the University of London. He said the video she had distributed was identical to that of Paul Joseph Watson, a conspiracy theorist affiliated with Alex Jones' Infowars website.
"So the problem is not a problem of manipulation, but simply a judgment in looking for your information," said Sullivan. "Why not use the C-SPAN feed directly? America can expect the president's press secretary to quote the best sources, and Sarah Sanders has let the American people down here. "
In a tweet on ThursdayWatson disputed that his video had been changed: "The media, without any verification of the facts, launched a plot claiming that I" accelerated "or" trafficked "Jim Acosta's video to avoid Acosta's behavior. . It's wrong. I do not have 'doctor' or 'accelerated'. It was fake news.
Acosta, who has often interfered with the White House and Trump, tweeted that Sanders' claim that he got his hands on the press officer was "a lie."
Sullivan says governments are less likely than ever to knowingly make a fake. The reason: "It's just too easy for the manipulation to be detected now. This generates too much adverse publicity in the media and social media, precisely because video is such a common means of communication. "
Hany Farid, a professor of computer science at the University of Dartmouth, said technology has created a kind of "arms race" between tools for manipulating videos and photos and those designed to detect counterfeits.
"It is obvious that the disclosure of misleading or falsified information is problematic, especially when it is done by our officials," he said. But as technology advances, he said, the question of what is real and what is not can be debated. "As the technology that allows us to manipulate images becomes more sophisticated and easier to use, the claim that a video is false becomes more believable," he said.
Farid points to another infamous video to illustrate his point, Trump's "Access Hollywood" tape boasting of women kissing and forcing each other by force. When revelation of this recording in 2016, he said: "No one said that it was a fake." Since then, Trump has questioned its authenticity .
"If this recording was broken today, he would almost certainly have said that it was fake," he said. And given the spread of digital modification technology, he "would have had a plausible denial".
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