Undercover Planned Parenthood Videos Were ALTERED, Analysis Finds

[kpete]

The reviewers looked at both shorter, edited videos that are about eight minutes to 15 minutes long and what Mr. Daleiden said were full-length recordings, some more than two hours long, that he released simultaneously.

A transcription service was hired to transcribe the videos, without being told that Planned Parenthood was the client, to compare with transcripts publicized by the anti-abortion group. That comparison, the analysis said, showed “substantive omissions” from the group’s version. Mr. Simpson was assisted in the analysis by several others including a video forensics expert, Grant Fredericks, and a television producer, Scott Goldie.

According to the investigation, the reviewers could not determine “the extent to which C.M.P.s undisclosed edits and cuts distort the meaning of the encounters the videos purport to document.”

But, it said, “the manipulation of the videos does mean they have no evidentiary value in a legal context and cannot be relied upon for any official inquiries” unless C.M.P. provides investigators with its original material, and that material is independently authenticated as unaltered.

For example, Mr. Fredericks said recordings in Houston and Denver were each missing about 30 minutes of video, judging from time stamps and frame counters on the recordings.

MORE!!!
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/28/us/abortion-planned-parenthood-videos.html

[COLGATE4]

1. Quelle surprise!!! nt

[TexasBushwhacker]

2. I also wonder about altering the audio track

In the one that I saw, much of the comments were off camera. They could be inserting any kind of comments they wanted, either comments/questions from the undercover operatives, or comments from the staff. There are so many ways you can manipulate video!

[sinkingfeeling]

3. That sure won't be on the TV news.

[DirkGently]

4. Heard O'Keefe interviewed once.

He seemed to believe that there was no difference between editing video in a journalistic, honest way, and doing so to completely misrepresent the subject.

It's essentially an extension of the Fox News rationale that every piece of information put out by journalists has a "spin" or a "take," (which is true to an extent) and that therefore just completely lying and deceiving is a mere matter of degree and therefore unimportant.

It's a pretty pernicious fallacy, and one that a lot of conservative media has embraced to one extent or another. They feel that they are entitled to use outright trickery and deceit because the bulk of real reporting doesn't represent reality the way they'd like to see it.

What they whistle right by, of course, is the difference between "bias" and deceit. Bias isn't necessarily wrong or untruthful.

As the saying goes, "reality has a liberal bias."