President Trump and Jim Acosta never did get along. Acosta is known for bombarding the President with aggressive questions, which the President responds to with aggressive answers, punctuated à la Trump with the classic refrain, “You are fake news.”
Perhaps you appreciate Acosta’s reporting style, or perhaps not. Regardless, it ought to come as a shock to know that last week, Trump took his fury against Acosta to a new extreme by suspending his hard pass to the White House after their heated exchange. What is unnerving about this rather extreme reaction is that the White House is justifying itself with an exaggerated portrayal of the event, as well as with misleading footage.
In the original C-SPAN clip, as Acosta tries questioning Trump, the president declares he has had enough. An intern approaches Acosta to take the microphone away, but he holds on and continues the verbal exchange with the President. Then, when the intern grabs his mic, Acosta brings down his left arm onto hers. He turns to her and says, “Pardon me, ma’am, I’m, I’m...” He does not give up the microphone, and she stops and sits down.
According to the White House, Acosta’s action was “inappropriate.” As Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted, the Administration will “never tolerate a reporter placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern.”
Hmm. You don’t have to look too closely at the footage to recognize that Acosta touched the intern unintentionally. You can scold Acosta for not ceding the mic, or you can berate the intern for trying to take it, but ultimately, to label the accidental contact as some kind of assault is a gross mischaracterization.
Not only has Sanders twisted the facts, but she has backed up her version of the story with a grainy, dubious video clip. In this video, Acosta is decidedly faster and more forceful than he is in the actual C-SPAN footage, executing a sort of karate chop. Also, since the clip lacks audio, we don’t hear Acosta apologizing to her afterwards.
According to multiple sources, it turns out that Sanders’ clip contains subtle alterations. As for whether the alteration was intentional, it is still hard to say. But given the source of her clip, it’s possible.
According to Snopes and PolitiFact, Sanders’ video comes from the conspiracy website Infowars, which made the video out of a GIF posted by the Daily Wire, a site which Snopes deems “unreliable.” In other words, she tweeted a video of a GIF of the original video.
Normal video runs at a little less than 30 frames per second, while a GIF runs at about half of that. Thus the video-to-GIF conversion performed by the Daily Wire removed half of the original frames. So Sanders posted footage that was incomplete.
This immediately brings up a question. Why would she tweet a video that contains less, when there is so much video available that contains more?
There are a number of videos showing the C-SPAN and Sanders clips side by side. One analysis by Storyful, a social-media intelligence firm, demonstrates that in Sarah Sanders’ video, three frames have been paused at the moment Acosta’s wrist begins to touch the intern’s arm. It then appears that the downward action of his arm was sped up, bringing the two clips back into synchrony while portraying the event in a misleading way.
Debate continues on whether these were intentional edits or a consequence the video-to-GIF-to-video conversion degrading the overall quality. Nevertheless, it is likely that the Trump administration took advantage of the clip’s lack of clarity to justify removing Acosta of his credentials.
Evidently, not even video of an event can be taken for granted, because it is so easy for someone to make small alterations to it that can drastically change the narrative of what is shown. Video is no longer definitive—we have to question our own eyes in order to know if we are being shown the truth.
“Your eyes can deceive you,” as old Obi Wan said. “Don’t trust them.”
The fact that the Administration would accept tampered-with evidence simply because it fits their views is not a surprise. But this is a reminder that it is up to us—citizens, reporters, technical experts, and all—to question and research the claims our politicians make, regardless of who they may be. We should not accept anything that a president says at face value. We need always verify that they are telling the truth.
