A deceptively edited video of Joe Biden signals what's coming [View all]

[Gothmog]

Link to tweet

A video that was edited in a monumentally dishonest fashion to make Joe Biden sound racist just circulated all over Twitter. Distressingly, some reporters and people with large Twitter followings tweeted out the video, before others drew their attention to the full context, causing them to backtrack
.
It is simply incredible that anyone in the business of informing people would circulate a video like this before verifying the full context. Have we really learned nothing in the past few years? One hopes this episode will be taken as a cautionary tale of what’s coming.

The video in question, which your humble blogger will not link to, shows only 19 seconds of a 13-minute monologue that Biden delivered in New Hampshire. Biden had been asked by an audience member to speak about his work and his agenda on sexual assault and domestic violence....

One of the original purveyors of this disinformation (again, we won’t link) is still pretending this was an honest depiction, and is accusing those who supplied the corrective context of being the “real” purveyors of disinformation. Take this as a glimpse of what’s coming.....

All this is a sign of what the Democratic nominee could face. It’s no wonder that some Democrats are worried we might even see “deepfake” media manipulations. Imagine such ultra-sophisticated video distortions of Biden’s rambles, retweeted by Trump, and perhaps even by reporters.

Trump views disinformation not as a scourge to be combated in the name of protecting our democracy, but as an ally. In this particular case, Trump has not retweeted the video of Biden — yet. But let’s try to learn from this.