Video of Acosta altered, expert says
NEW YORK — A video distributed by the Trump administration to support its argument for banning CNN reporter Jim Acosta from the White House appears to have been doctored to make Acosta look more aggressive than he was during an exchange with a White House intern, an independent expert said Thursday.
Unedited video shows Acosta, who was attempting to question the president, gripping a microphone as a female intern tried to pry it away. He said “Excuse me, ma’am” as he maneuvered to keep his hold. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders later tweeted a shorter clip in which the speed was altered to make Acosta appear to chop hard at her arm. She did not say where that clip came from.
Under fire for manufacturing a rationale to deny Acosta access to the White House complex, Sanders on Thursday refused to back down.
“The question is: Did the reporter make contact or not?” she said in a statement. “The video is clear, he did. We stand by our statement.”
A frame-by-frame comparison with an Associated Press video of the same incident shows that the one tweeted by Sanders had been altered to speed up Acosta’s arm movement as he touches the intern’s arm, according to Abba Shapiro, an independent video producer who examined the footage at AP’s request. Acosta
Earlier, Shapiro had noticed that some frames in the tweeted video were frozen to slow down the action, allowing it to run the same length as the AP one.
The alteration is “too precise to be an accident,” said Shapiro, who trains instructors to use video editing software. The tweeted video also does not have any audio, which Shapiro said makes video easier to alter.
CNN has said Sanders’ description of Acosta’s exchange with the intern is a lie. Its position has been supported by witnesses including Reuters White House correspondent Jeff Mason, who was next to Acosta during the news conference and tweeted that he did not see Acosta place his hands on the White House employee. Rather, he said, he saw him holding on to the microphone as she reached for it.
“The irony of this White House video involving Jim Acosta is that if it is found to be doctored, it will show the administration to be doing what it accuses the news media of doing — engaging in fake information,” said Aly Colon, a professor in journalism ethics at Washington & Lee University.
Several journalists and organizations — including the American Society of News Editors, the Associated Press Media Editors and the Online News Association — demanded Acosta’s press pass be reinstated.
The New York Times wondered what Sanders had to say “when her boss praised as ‘my kind of guy’ Rep. Greg Gianforte of Montana, who was sentenced to anger management classes and community service for body-slamming a Guardian reporter last spring?”