The White House’s press secretary has tweeted a manipulated video shared by the editor-at-large of conspiracy theorist outlet Infowars to attempt to justify its decision to suspend the press credentials of CNN’s chief white house correspondent.
CNN’s Jim
Acosta had his press pass pulled by the White House earlier today after press
secretary Sarah Sanders claimed he had “plac[ed] his hands on a young woman
just trying to do her job”.
Acosta
disputes this.
This is a lie. https://t.co/FastFfWych
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) November 8, 2018
The
journalist had being trying to continue asking president Trump questions during
a contentious exchange at a White House press briefing.
During this
exchange Trump cut over him verbally — saying “that’s enough” — at which point
a female White House intern moved towards Acosta and attempted to take the
microphone out of his hands.
The
journalist dodged and then blocked several attempts to take the microphone by
using his arm and the side of his hand against the intern’s arm, addressing her
with “pardon me ma’am” as he did so, and indicating that he was trying to ask
Trump another question.
You can see
what happened in a video shared by NBC News which captured footage of the
incident (below). In the footage the intern can be seen stopping trying to
remove the mic after Acosta speaks to her. He goes on to ask Trump if he is
“worried about indictments coming down in [the Russia] investigation”.
Trump does
not answer, repeating “that’s enough” and “put down the mic”.
Getting no
answers, Acosta does then relinquish the mic.
BREAKING: White House aide grabs and tries
to physically remove a microphone from CNN Correspondent Jim Acosta during a
contentious exchange with President Trump at a news conference.
pic.twitter.com/fFm7wclFw2
— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 7, 2018
Far right
conspiracy theorist outlet Infowars quickly spun into action after this episode
— publishing a couple of posts on its website couching Acosta’s actions as a
“physical confrontation with female White House staffer”, and asking in a
lengthy video post whether Acosta “assault[ed] a woman?”.
In the video
Infowars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson can be seen following the modern
political disinformation playbook — avoiding personally claiming the incident
constituted an assault while repeatedly showing manipulated, slowed down
footage, stripped of its audio, to make it look like an assault — all the while
suggestively reframing what happened to whip up hyperpartisan sentiment (‘what
if this had been a conservative reporter ranting at Obama’ etc) in order to
manipulate his audience to side with the president against CNN.
Watson was
also active on social media, seeding a further doctored version of footage on
Twitter — which includes a repeat close crop that zooms in on the CNN
reporter’s hand against the intern’s arm, making it look as if Acosta is giving
her a karate chop.
Yes the incident clearly did happen. Acosta
placed his hands on a woman. Do you think we're all stupid?
pic.twitter.com/lbYOXtgXJx
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet)
November 8, 2018
This is very
clearly not what the unedited video shows.
In the
unedited footage Acosta can be seen essentially brushing off the intern’s
attempt to grab the mic — and addressing her politely at the crucial moment,
when the side of his hand is resting on her arm. She responds to his polite
“pardon me ma’am” by stepped back and stopping trying to take the mic away.
Acosta then
asks Trump more questions which Trump does not answer.
Now Infowars
conspiracy theorists creating doctored videos to try to spin hyperpartisan junk
news is not new or news. Their business model is based on manipulating viewers’
emotions to flog them, er, junk supplements.
But what is
new is that three hours after Sanders issued her series of tweets accusing
Acosta of inappropriately placing his hands on a young woman, the White House
press secretary tweeted again — this time appearing to share the exact same
doctored video that had been shared earlier by Watson, as he worked to put the
Infowars’ divisive alternative spin on reality.
Sanders
referred directly to the video in her tweet, claiming that “inappropriate
behaviour” had been “clearly documented in this video”:
We stand by our decision to revoke this
individual’s hard pass. We will not tolerate the inappropriate behavior clearly
documented in this video. pic.twitter.com/T8X1Ng912y
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) November 8,
2018
So the White
House is using video footage that’s been manipulated through a conspiracy
theorist lens to justify a free speech-chilling ban on an actual journalist.
I’ll say
that again: The White House is using a manipulated video shared by conspiracy
theorists to justify suspending the press credentials of CNN’s chief white
house correspondent.
And once
more: The White House is using lies to justify pulling the press credentials of
a genuine journalist.
turns out, as we probably all knew it
would, that we didn't need deepfakes for nation states to start pushing lies using
video https://t.co/rghBqSNcgO
— hal (@halhod) November 8, 2018
Trump has
made no secret of his hatred for CNN — repeatedly badging the cable news
network ‘fake news’ in myriad vitriolic tweets since taking office.
Now his
administration has gone a step further in seeking to stamp out reality by using
manipulated video to bar a genuine news outlet from presidential press
briefings. A news outlet that the president especially hates.
Let that
sink in.
It’s not
just conspiracy theorists who use this kind of information manipulation
playbook of course. Authoritarian regimes, terrorists, criminals, racists… the
list goes on.
Now you can
add the White House press secretary to that ignominious list.
We’ve
reached out to the White House to ask why Sanders chose to share the Infowars
video — rather than sharing unedited footage of the incident. We’ll update this
post with any response.
Meanwhile,
on the list of people being allowed into White House press briefings these
days…
The QAnon-loving livestream lady from
yesterday is back for the news conference, @willsommer @jaredlholt
@oneunderscore__ pic.twitter.com/z0gDxz6KN1
— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg)
November 7, 2018
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