White House is accused of sharing doctored footage of CNN altercation
THE White House has shared digitally manipulated footage of a CNN reporter’s interaction with an intern, according to an expert consulted by the ‘Daily Telegraph’ in London.
The paper asked a video verification expert to analyse the footage, and he said it appeared to have been manipulated.
Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, shared C-Span footage of CNN reporter Jim Acosta and a White House intern, accusing him of placing his hands on her and using it as justification to remove Mr Acosta’s press credentials.
The footage of C-Span’s broadcast had earlier appeared on the Twitter account of Paul Joseph Watson, an editor for the alt-right conspiracy theorist website InfoWars when it was shared by Ms Sanders.
Experts said that in Ms Sanders’s version, the footage has been frozen for three frames to make the contact with the intern’s arm longer and by implication more aggressive.
Alan O’Riordan, a video verification expert, said there were clear “discrepancies” between the C-Span version and the version Ms Sanders tweeted.
“In [Ms Sanders’s] version, what we see is something that has been added to the original, it repeats several frames at a crucial moment of the footage basically. We found three repeated frames where you can see Jim Acosta’s arm make contact with the intern’s arm.”
The row began after a press conference on Wednesday, during which a White House intern tried to physically remove Mr Acosta’s microphone as he repeatedly questioned President Donald Trump.
Ms Sanders released a statement accusing Mr Acosta of “placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern”, calling it “absolutely unacceptable”.
Mr Acosta called Ms Sanders’s characterisation of the incident “a lie”, and CNN released a statement defending its reporter.
Mr Acosta’s press pass was revoked by the White House following his heated exchange with Mr Trump, who called him a “rude, terrible person”. (© Daily Telegraph London)