More Americans might think that President Joe Biden was trying to sit in a non-existent chair the other day than know this boring truth. there was actually a chair.
The sit-in was just one of many fast-paced video clips the conservative media ecosystem has brought to life over the past two weeks, giving fact-checkers and the Biden team little chance.
The Republican National Committee, mainstream conservative media outlets and right-wing influencers have succeeded in releasing what they claim are videos. show “evidence”. Biden’s wanders around, freezes or even fills his pants with substance usually represented by a brown swirl emoji.
Independent fact checkers and there’s the Biden campaign shown while the videos are checked by artificial intelligence, tend to collapse even under basic scrutiny as the moments are viewed in context or from wider camera angles.
“Fact-checked by at least six major publications for lying about President Biden with cheap hoaxes, Rupert Murdoch’s sad little super PAC, the New York Post, is back to disrespecting its readers and itself once again,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said. That’s what Biden said in a statement referring to a video of a weekend fundraiser with former President Barack Obama. landed on tcovers The Post, a conservative tabloid.
According to researchers Britt Paris and Joan Donovan, “deep fakes” are audio, video or images created or edited with artificial intelligence technology that are deceptive, but “cheap fakes”.manipulation created with cheaper, more accessible software (or, neither). Cheap fakes can be rendered through Photoshop, the likes, re-contextualizing images, speeding up or slowing down.”
Again, even if they’re deceptive, the videos play nonetheless current concerns of voters It’s about Biden’s age and it’s made for internet virality, meaning busy voters are more likely to encounter short fever clips than more serious fact-checks chasing them.
“A lie is a 100-meter dash and a fact-check is a walk on the beach. So it will never catch on. And it will never have the same opportunity,” Democratic strategist and Obama spokesman Eric Schultz said Sunday. called out to the public Publika.az reports that “Post” characterization of fundraising as a lie.
Last week, Republicans pushed a video in Europe of Biden attending the Group of Seven summit in which he allegedly “walked around” in a confused haze before the Italian prime minister pulled him back. Uncut video and footage from wider angles show Biden saluting a paratrooper who had just landed as part of the ceremony.
The controversy caused by the video grew so much that British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was asked to explain the moment to an eyewitness.
“Everyone was down and he was very polite. And he went to talk to all of them individually, “said Sunak told reporters.
Before that, the RNC’s opposition investigative report He suggested that Biden had a medical incident because she didn’t dance at the Juneteenth event, even though Biden has long said she’s not much of a dancer and barely danced before her first ball in 2021.
At a fundraiser in Los Angeles, Biden and Obama waved to supporters after receiving a standing ovation, with Biden looking out into the audience for a moment before the more punctual Obama signaled it was time to leave the stage. Several people who attended the event said this did not recognize The New York Post commented that Biden appeared to be “freezing.”
‘Pattern of Behavior’
Republicans won’t apologize for individual videos — they don’t trust mainstream media fact-checking, though.
“This is an example of behavior. It’s not like an example,” Trump’s campaign spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said in an interview. “It’s not like we make these videos. This is Joe Biden in real time. We just put it out there for the world to see.”
Asked about a clipped video showing Biden trying to sit in a chair that didn’t exist, according to Republicans (in fact, it just hidden from view with the camera angle), “The videos speak for themselves,” Leavitt said.
“Cheap fake words are very strange [are] even used,” he said. “There’s nothing cheap or fake about these videos. These are real clips of Joe Biden acting weird.
“The entire strategy of the Biden campaign is to convince people not to believe their eyes,” he said.
The proliferation of videos highlights what academics can be a particularly tumultuous election cycle. Many major social media platforms have rolled back several checks and balances on the spread of false or misleading information. Under pressure from Republicans. Meanwhile, the strength and reach just a few accounts X can spreading talking points to millions of people This is then picked up by the more mainstream conservative media.
Taking liberties with video editing or simply distorting what is happening in the video is nothing new. But former President Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party has pushed the party further from the murky chasm between fraud and lying, while technology has allowed clips to be clipped and broadcast constantly.
Reaching voters who don’t consume much political news is a challenge at best, and it becomes even more difficult when organizations try to reach the same voters a second time to change their minds about some of the political content they previously received. encountered.
Conservative media outlets that publish such clips include not only popular ideologues, Like Fox Newsas well as Sinclair Broadcasting’s extensive network of local television news stations, they are repackaged versions of the same same title About Biden looking frozen.
Few in the conservative media resisted the onslaught of videos. Howard Kurtz is a Fox News anchor and media journalist is one of the few notable outliersCalling out the New York Post and fellow Sean Hannity for their coverage of the G7 video.
The algorithms of Internet platforms and the organic behavior of their users tend to reward the surprising and controversial while ignoring the ordinary.
“We cannot stop them from doing this”
The Democrats’ strategy for dealing with the videos is twofold, according to many people familiar with the thinking of the Biden campaign, the White House and allied fringe groups.
First, they will try to insert them into the conservative media ecosystem and extreme online political discourse spaces like X, hoping to prevent them from going mainstream as much as possible.
By to be aggressive By fact-checking, quickly posting more video clips with appropriate context, and subpoenaing media outlets that report on them, the White House and the Biden campaign hope to prevent them from spreading too far.
“We can’t stop them from doing it. What we can do is get fact checks and fight like hell to get those fact checks out,” he said. “Is it potentially infiltrating independent voters? Yes, and we protect against that and fight against that.”
Second, Democrats are ramping up their attacks on Trump online, aggressively posting their own viral videos of Trump’s verbal rants, interesting tangents, and awkward actions.
These include highlighting what Trump says are big moments, such as when he said at a rally Saturday night that Biden should “take a cognitive test” — only minutes later name the doctor an examiner like him.
Much of it came from Biden’s headquarters, the account used by the Biden campaign’s investigative and rapid response teams to blast Trump. For example, in a clip from the same event, Trump promised to take questions after his speech – “This is different from Joe Biden. He doesn’t take any questions” – but he left the stage without asking.
Schultz said, “Both candidates are older, but one has solid and credible thinking. As long as that goes away, I think we’ll be fine in November.”
Trump’s campaign has also complained about videos that the Biden campaign has portrayed as misleading in the past. That includes Trump telling auto workers he “will.”a pool of blood” is not selected. Trump’s campaign has said the term refers specifically to the auto industry and that Democrats are deliberately mischaracterizing it by implying that Trump is inciting violence.
Still, Democrats, including Biden himself — hardly a digital native — understand the difficulty of suppressing the viral videos that many Americans want to believe.
“The truth is, the way we communicate with people today is very little — there’s just a lot of opportunity to lie,” Biden said at a fundraiser in Los Angeles. “Most of what’s on the Internet is completely false.”
First lady Jill Biden discussed Biden’s age at a senior event in Phoenix on Saturday: “Joe and the other guy are actually the same age, so let’s not be fooled.”
According to polls, voters so far do not agree with him. Some Democrats are always gearing up for some big, unedited moment when Biden shows his age.
NBC News‘ National survey at the end of January three-quarters of voters, including many Democrats, said they had major or minor concerns about Biden’s physical and mental health.