Thread by @ErrataRob

As for manipulated media, this piece comes from Fox News, so I immediately distrust it. But as far as I can tell, yes, CNN manipulated it.

https://twitter.com/MarkDice/status/1303518374555652097

2/ You can confirm this by going onto CNN's website and watching their video:

3/ You can plug in the picture into TinEye and see that nowhere else on the Internet does the CNN version appear.

4/ Which is the authentic version, CNN's version without the logo or one with the logo? Well, the version WITH the logo is what Biden has on his website.

5/ Now if this were political video, well, then I'd laugh at how politicians manipulate content and lie as they always do.

But CNN claims to be journalists, in which case such manipulation of images is gross violation of ethics of the highest order.

6/ My father was an Associated Press journalist. Here's how the AP deals with a case where a photographer editted out his own camera from a picture:
ap.org/ap-in-the-news…

7/ Here's another case from the Associated Press cutting ties with a photographer, and removing all his images from their library, for the crime of editing out his own shadow from an image.

popphoto.com/news/2011/07/a…

8/ BTW, the purpose of this thread isn't to repeat Trump's claim that CNN is "Fake News". Journalism is hard and mistakes happen. It how an organization deals with error that is important.

9/ In other words, if CNN takes this issue seriously, investigates it, and fires people if image manipulation is found, then CNN is clearly "Good News".

If CNN ignores this issue, or defends it as legitimate, then yes, they'll have proven themselves worthy of Trump's claim.

10/ This a great lesson in journalism. The AP takes a scorched earth approach to image manipulation even on truly harmless things like "removed a shadow" in order to avoid situations like this one where it's more debatable whether the edit was justified.

11/ In other words, Democrats will claim the edit was harmless while Republicans will claim the edit was meaningful. Both sides choose subjective partisanship over objective principle, so the AP sets the bar where only objective principle is involved.

12/ BTW, we don't know what happened. Was it CNN employee/contractor who change the image for this show? Or did they pull the image from a recent press kit provided by the Biden campaign, and thus a Biden person manipulated it.

13/13 Well, we have our answer: the theory of my last tweet is correct: they received the doctored photo from the Biden campaign:
washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/medi…