Manipulated video fact checking is coming of age

CONTEXT

A Washington Post article, How an out-of-context Jen Psaki clip led to days of Fox coverage, discussed a video that Fox intentionally manipulated to foment its standard menu of divisive deceit, lies, outrage and crackpottery among Fox viewers. 

The Fox rage, hate, lies & deceit machine fires up with the professional liars 

at Fox whipping up baseless self-righteous moral outrage

This is the out of context quote that Fox attributed to Psaki and then pounded on for days:

“You know, I think it speaks to if you look at Fox on a daily basis. I mean, do you remember the four boxes that you had that we had on all the TVs, right, which is on my TV right now? So right now, just to give you a sense of CNN, Pentagon, as many as eighty-five hundred U.S. troops on heightened alert. Okay, true. Same on MSNBC. CNBC is doing their own thing about the market. And then on Fox, is Jeanine Pirro talking about soft-on-crime consequences? I mean, what? What does that even mean? Right? So there’s an alternate universe on some coverage. What’s scary about it is a lot of people watch that.” — White House press secretary Jen Psaki, in a viral video tweet, posted by @HouseRepublicans on Jan. 31

This is what Psaki said with content that Fox omitted included:

JON LOVETT (Pod Save America podcast): So I want to talk about the kinds of questions he gets kind of questions you get. I watched your briefing today and I have to come back to this Doocy cat. So here’s my question. He always puts out a gotcha question. Like today, he basically asked two. One was, does President Biden think parents should be under the boot of nameless bureaucrats when it comes to their children’s education? And the other was, does President Biden think crime is good? You do not fall for any of this bait. To your credit, though, I think someone much worse at your job would also not fall for these questions. Are you worried that he’s not adjusting, that there’s not a new strategy to try to catch you in some kind of a gotcha question?

JEN PSAKI: You know, I am not here to work for Peter Doocy or Fox, but I will say that, you know, if you look at how it’s portrayed and how my answers are portrayed, even when I say no, we don’t think crime is good, and here’s all the things we’ve done, including the thing that makes, I think, makes Republicans crazy. Just anecdotally by the hate tweets I get on Twitter when I say this is that they’ve voted against funding for local cops programs because the American Rescue Plan, also that Biden has supported $300 billion more in funding. And at the same time, he also thinks we need police reform. It’s like they don’t know what to do with that. But every time we say that, it makes them crazy. You know, I think it speaks to if you look at Fox on a daily basis. I mean, do you remember the four boxes that you had that we had on all the TVs, right, which is on my TV right now? So right now, just to give you a sense of CNN, Pentagon, as many as eighty-five hundred U.S. troops on heightened alert. Okay, true. Same on MSNBC. CNBC is doing their own thing about the market. And then on Fox, is Jeanine Pirro talking about soft on crime consequences? I mean, what? What does that even mean? Right? So there’s an alternate universe on some coverage. What’s scary about it is a lot of people watch that and they think that the president isn’t doing anything to address people’s safety in New York, and that couldn’t be further from the truth or other places. 

What Fox quoted is in bold italic, and what Fox omitted is regular text. Note that Fox omitted most of what was needed to understand the context of Psaki’s comments, i.de., it was intentional deceit in service to irrational emotional manipulation.

The omitted comments make clear that Psaki wasn’t randomly criticizing Fox News. Instead she was responding to a question about an exchange between her and Fox News reporter Peter Doocy during a Jan. 24 White House briefing. Psaki argued that Republicans paint a distorted portrait of the Biden administration’s efforts to support police. Fox cut that point out. Fox also cut a sentence off to remove Psaki’s claim that Biden was not addressing public safety “couldn’t be further from the truth.”

According to the WaPo article, when Psaki tried to correct the record for Fox, Fox ignored her:

Psaki’s edited comments quickly picked up steam, despite her offering clarifying remarks to Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich on Jan. 31, and releasing a transcript with the missing context highlighted later that same day. Psaki’s efforts did little to dissuade the negative coverage. For its part, the House Republican Twitter account was unrepentant — doubling down with this response.

House Republicans doubled down and responded this lie with after being told they were liars:

Psaki Mocks The “Consequences” Of “Soft-On-Crime” Democrat Policies
As violent crime continues to surge across America, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki mocks Americans discussing the “consequences” of Democrats' “soft-on-crime” policies.

No deception, just your words.

You should probably just sit this one out and “have a margarita.”pic.twitter.com/oRXyuPeEh0

— House Republicans (@HouseGOP) February 1, 2022

Fact checkers construct a taxonomy for manipulated video propaganda

That article referred to the manipulated video clip as an example of video propaganda in a category that the WaPo fact checkers call “isolated,” and gave a link to what they meant by isolated.

That link led to a WaPo article, SEEING ISN’T BELIEVING: The Fact Checker’s guide to manipulated video. The article started with this:

The Fox video was an example of the “isolation” propaganda technique

Here are the three genera and six species of manipulated videos defined by WaPo’s fact checkers. An example of each of the six kinds of propagandized video is included in the article.

Genus: Missing context

Species 1: Misrepresentation: Presenting unaltered video in an inaccurate manner misrepresents the footage and misleads the viewer. Using incorrect dates or locations are examples of subverting context. 

Species 2: Isolation: Sharing a brief clip from a longer video creates a false narrative that does not reflect the event as it occurred. Point-of-view videos also belong in this category when they promote only one angle of a story. This is what the liars at Fox and lying House Republic and did to Psaki.

Genus: Deceptive editing

Species 1: Omission: Editing out large portions from a video and presenting it as a complete narrative, despite missing key elements, is a technique used to skew reality.

Species 2: Splicing: Editing together disparate videos fundamentally alters the story that is being told.

Genus: Malicious Transformation

Species 1: Doctoring: Altering the frames of a video — cropping, changing speed, using Photoshop, dubbing audio, or adding or deleting visual information — can deceive the viewer.

Species 2: Fabrication: Using Artificial Intelligence to create high-quality fake images simulates audio and convincingly swaps out background images. Deepfakes and other synthetic media fall into this category.