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. 

Regarding the latest GOP attack on Democracy

“Intolerance is almost inevitably accompanied by a natural and true inability to comprehend or make allowance for opposite points of view. .... We find here with significant uniformity what one psychologist has called ‘logic-proof compartments.’ The logic-proof compartment has always been with us. .... The public and the press, or for that matter, the public and any force that modifies public opinion, interact. . . . . The truth is that while it appears to be forming public opinion on fundamental matters, the press is often conforming to it. .... Proof that the public and the institutions that make public opinion interact is shown in instances in which books were stifled because of popular disapproval at one time and then brought forward by popular demand at a later time when public opinion had altered. Religious and very early scientific works are among such books.” -- Edward Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion, 1923

An article in the New York Times today, G.O.P. Declares Jan. 6 Attack ‘Legitimate Political Discourse’[1], is solid evidence of how autocratic and anti-democratic the GOP has become. The NYT writes:

The Republican Party on Friday officially declared the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and events that led to it “legitimate political discourse,” and rebuked two lawmakers in the party who have been most outspoken in condemning the deadly riot and the role of Donald J. Trump in spreading the election lies that fueled it.

The Republican National Committee’s voice vote to censure Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois at its winter meeting in Salt Lake City culminated more than a year of vacillation, which started with party leaders condemning the Capitol attack and Mr. Trump’s conduct, then shifted to downplaying and denying it.

On Friday, the party went further in a resolution slamming Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger for taking part in the House investigation of the assault, saying they were participating in “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”  

“Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger crossed a line,” Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, said in a statement. “They chose to join Nancy Pelosi in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.”  

.... It was the latest and most forceful effort by the Republican Party to minimize what happened and the broader attempt by Mr. Trump and his allies to invalidate the results of the 2020 election. In approving it and opting to punish two of its own, Republicans seemed to embrace a position that many of them have only hinted at: that the assault and the actions that preceded it were acceptable.

It came days after Mr. Trump suggested that, if re-elected in 2024, he would consider pardons for those convicted in the Jan. 6 attack and for the first time described his goal that day as subverting the election results, saying in a statement that Vice President Mike Pence “could have overturned the election.” (emphasis added)

For conservatives, what is there to worry about? The GOP leadership justifies the 1/6 coup attempt as legitimate discourse and the ex-president would pardon the 1/6 insurrectionists because they did nothing wrong. That is why most rank and file Republicans are unconcerned.  

After news of its vote got out, the RNC realized how bad it looked. The leadership then tried to deflect from the stark reality that the GOP is autocratic and anti-democratic. Party leaders feebly said that calling the 1/6 coup attempt legitimate discourse did not apply to the people who tried to overthrow the government on 1/6. Well, if the actual rioters did nothing wrong, then the people who planned the 1/6 event must have done something bad. Of course, that won't do for the GOP because it will never discipline its elites, not even for trying to overthrow the government. 

So, what the hell was the RNC even talking about? The answer is simple and frightening: It does not matter what the RNC was referring to or whether it makes any sense or not. What counts in tribal politics is the leadership says something, even if it is sheer nonsense. The rank and file need something to cling to, even if it is clearly and directly contradicted by evidence and/or sound reasoning.

Because of ruthless propaganda like this, most conservatives in America today (~95% ?) see no cause for concern about Republican attacks on democracy, elections, the rule of law or civil liberties. In their minds, the cause for worry about such things is the Democrats. The Dems are democracy attacking socialist tyrants, kleptocrats, thugs and liars, not the GOP. According to the GOP leadership's deceit, lies and slanders, Republicans are the ones valiantly and righteously defending what is good and decent, contrary evidence be damned. 

In fact, decades of ruthless GOP propaganda has been teaching, among other anti-democratic things, (i) distrust of democracy, experts, truth, a free press, and (ii) intolerance and fear of political opposition and dissenting opinions.[1] That distrust and intolerance has created in the minds of most rank and file conservatives a huge logic-proof compartment[2] about what the GOP actually stands for and why and how it relies so heavily on deceit, lies and social division. 

Building those logic-proof compartments via decades of propaganda makes the GOP leadership's current claim ring true. In those trapped minds, the 1/6 coup attempt really was innocent and legitimate political discourse. Contrary evidence just does not matter.

Footnotes: 

1. Dissenting opinions in the GOP leadership are RINO hunted out. Experts bearing inconvenient news, e.g., climate science experts, public health experts, etc., are dismissed as liars, with every honest mistake being irrefutable evidence of a massive socialist conspiracy and/or lies. 

2. The logic-proof compartment here constitutes mostly sacrosanct political beliefs and tribal loyalty that contrary evidence cannot reach. Belief that the 1/6 coup attempt was not a serious attack on democracy or that the ex-president did anything wrong are two of those beliefs.

The Political Animal

Aristotle insists that man is either a political animal (the natural state) or an outcast like a “bird which flies alone” (4thC BC)

 In his Politics, Aristotle believed man was a "political animal" because he is a social creature with the power of speech and moral reasoning:

Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either above humanity, or below it; he is the ‘Tribeless, lawless, hearthless one,’ whom Homera denounces—the outcast who is a lover of war; he may be compared to a bird which flies alone.

Aristotle’s statement that man is a “political animal” can be taken in a number of ways. One reading is to say that man is naturally sociable (the Pufendorf-Grotius line) and that they are naturally drawn to various political associations in order to satisfy their social needs. Another reading, which sees the word “political” in a less charitable light, might state that, since politics is based upon violence and threats of violence, the phrase emphasises the “animal” side of human nature rather than its rational and cooperative side. Those who turn their back on the violence inherent in politics, in Aristotle’s view, also turn their back on society - they declare themselves to be outlaws, without a “tribe”, and without a heart. His likening them to a “bird which flies alone” reminds me of the Rudyard Kipling story in The Just So Stories (1902) about “The Cat who walked by Himself”, because he of all the wild animals refused to be domesticated by human beings. Of course, there is also Robert Frost’s poem “The Road not Taken” (1920) with the line about choosing “the one less traveled by”. Is this such a bad thing?

https://oll.libertyfund.org/quote/aristotle-insists-that-man-is-either-a-political-animal-the-natural-state-or-an-outcast-like-a-bird-which-flies-alone-4thc-bc

Thoughts about the California gerrymander

Some years ago, California voted to put redistricting in the hands of a non-partisan commission. Over time that did reduce voter disenfranchisement. I voted for that ballot measure and was happy when it passed.

Now, I've changed my mind. I want to get rid of the independent commission and let the Dem party gerrymander every elected Republican out of every local, state and federal office where a Republican can be gerrymandered out of office. The Republican threat to democracy, elections, the rule of law and civil liberties is too high to give up this partisan weapon in this state. 

According to FiveThirtyEight, with California's current non-partisan districting, the state looks like this:

9 highly competitive House voting districts

7 republican districts

37 democratic districts

Under Democratic gerrymandering, CA would look like this:

0 highly competitive House voting districts

6 republican districts

47 democratic districts

That is why I changed my mind about the gerrymander. CA alone has unilaterally conceded 10 safe Democratic House seats for the sake of voter enfranchisement. That alone could be enough to give the Republican Party control of the House in 2022 and 2024, which in turn could be enough to allow the Republican Party to mostly or completely kill American democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties.

Question: 

1. Should CA go back to partisan gerrymandering?