Washington Post Fact-Checker Doubles Down on Cheap Fakes

Once more into the cheap fakes breach, dear friends!

Last week I wrote a post titled “NY Post: We Were Right About ‘Cheap Fakes’ and the Washington Post Was Wrong.” The NY Post had taken a moment to look back on criticism of its decision to highlight this video of Biden posted by the RNC.

WHAT IS BIDEN DOING? pic.twitter.com/iY33K2srII

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 13, 2024

The NY Post turned it into a cover story at the time:

Today’s cover: Biden wanders away at G7 summit before being pulled back by Italian PM https://t.co/7x25op0b2E pic.twitter.com/onVysLvVqv

— New York Post (@nypost) June 14, 2024

And the reaction from the left was furious. Keith Olbermann said the cover was worse than terrorism.

Murdoch and your “newspaper” and its deliberate alterations of the news, like the cropping of that photo, are more dangerous to this country than any terrorist group

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) June 14, 2024

But the basic reaction, copied by a lot of people on the left, was this:

pic.twitter.com/nNkxS9WBLt

— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) June 14, 2024

Biden didn’t “wander off” he was giving a thumbs up to a different skydiver. And that’s pretty much what the entire media went with. Here’s NBC News:

The NBC News video contains nothing to suggest that Biden wandered, a word that often implies aimless walking. Instead, it shows he was walking toward a specific destination: a group of at least three kneeling parachutists.

And here’s Andrew Bates from the White House tweeting out the same argument being made by Abby Phillip on CNN:

.@abbydphillip fact checks the cheap fakes: “The New York Post saw the [RNC] video and put the stills on the front page, ‘Meanderer in Chief.’ The problem is, that is also wildly misleading.”

“Biden wasn’t staring off into the distance…he was watching a diving demonstration.” pic.twitter.com/BYT3XfwS52

— Andrew Bates Archived (@AndrewJBates46) June 18, 2024

In sum, Biden wasn’t “wandering” because he was not acting aimlessly but had a clear goal, i.e. trying to have a conversation with one of the parachutists off to the left. Note that you can actually see one of those guys in the original RNC clip above though he’s not visible in the screengrab the NY Post used on its front page. Nevertheless, for the entire media this unaltered pool video was labeled a “cheap fake” being unfairly used to imply Biden wasn’t mentally with it.

That’s the same basic argument that the Post’s fact-checkers took at the time, giving the NY Post four Pinocchios (a brazen lie) for saying Biden wandered off and suggesting he was not with it. 

Yesterday, the Post’s fact checker, Glenn Kessler, doubled down. Citing the NY Post story criticizing his fact-check he opens by somewhat mischaracterizing the contents of the book that has reopened all of this. [emphasis added]

The editorial was prompted by a new book, “Original Sin” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, that says the Biden White House covered up the former president’s decline in his final months in office.

I haven’t read the book yet but I’ve watched hours of video of Tapper and Thompson talking about the book plus read lots of lengthy stories based on the book. From everything I’ve seen, the book does not merely describe a cover up of Biden’s decline “in his final months in office.” On the contrary, the book suggests there were clear indications of Biden’s decline going back at least as far as 2020 and becoming prominent by 2023, more than a year before he left office. From there, Kessler acknowledges the unfortunate timing of the original fact-check:

This fact check, written with video editor Adriana Usero, appeared on June 15 — 12 days before Biden gave a faltering performance in his only debate with Donald Trump, which led him to bow out of the race. 

Yes, I’d say that having the whole media push back on this “cheap fake” weeks before Biden’s complete collapse on stage in front of the entire country does suggest that nearly everyone in the media missed the forest for the trees. Here’s his summary of the original fact check:

“Biden is seen with other Group of Seven leaders watching skydivers in Italy, carrying the flags of the nations. Biden turns and walks a few steps to chat with one of the parachutists, the only leader to do so,” we wrote. “Then Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni turns him back to the other leaders. In one feed distributed by news services — the one used by the RNC — it’s not entirely clear whom Biden is talking to, but an alternative feed, also distributed by news services, makes it clear that Biden is having a conversation.”

Again, you can see Biden is talking to other parachutists in the original RNC clip. There was nothing misleading about that, though I guess it’s fair to say that when the NY Post subsequently made the video into a vertical clip (suitable for cell phones), it was no longer clear who Biden was looking at. However, the Post included the RNC video in their story so they weren’t hiding anything from readers. Here’s Kessler’s conclusion in light of current information:

Verdict: The fact check ran two weeks before Biden blew the debate with Trump, showing his age. Bad timing, perhaps. Some readers might argue that we were so focused on the trees that we missed the forest. But, on a journalistic level, the analysis of the deceptive video clips holds up well, even if the issue of Biden’s age became front and center in the campaign and eventually forced his departure. The New York Post ran its article based on a clip distributed by a political party, apparently without checking alternative video feeds. We demonstrated that the alternative feed undercut the narrative promoted by the RNC.

I don’t know what the point is in doubling down on this at this late date. The entire media undeniably did miss the forest for the trees. That’s the whole point of Tapper and Thompson’s book. There’s no question about it any longer. Nearly all of them missed the biggest story of 2024.

I’d of course go further and say they got the trees wrong as well. This video does show Joe Biden wandering off and losing focus on what he was there to do. As I said last week, he’s not there as a tourist but as a world leader. He’s literally at that spot for a photo op showing the G7 leaders bonding together and instead of sticking with the cameras in front of the group, he wandered off to talk to someone who was part of the show off to one side. This is not how photo ops work.

The other leaders recognize the problem immediately. As I described at the time, President Macron moves into the gap and Prime Minister Meloni walks backward across the whole group to hook Biden by the arm and turn him around. If they could see the problem and had to physically correct Biden, why couldn’t the entire US media admit it?

Did Joe Biden wander off like a mental patient who has no goals and no idea where he is? No, that didn’t happen. Did he wander off in the sense of losing focus on what he was there to do and having to be corrected by others around him to avoid spoiling the photo op for everyone? Absolutely, yes. He wandered off and was pulled back before it got really awkward.

Joe Biden missed the forest (the world leader photo op) for the trees (the individual skydivers) and the media missed the forest (Biden’s mental decline) for the trees (Biden was doing something just not what he was there to do).

The bottom line here is that the conservative media, which was ridiculed in the original headline for the Post fact-check (“‘Cheapfake’ Biden videos enrapture right-wing media, but deeply mislead”), was right about Biden. Yes, we were enraptured because we could see what was happening before our own eyes even as the entire professional media missed it.

At least Jake Tapper had the decency to say as much yesterday. Why can’t others who got it wrong do the same? The fact-checkers and CNN hosts and NBC writers who rambled on about “cheap fakes” should just admit they missed the forest for the trees on the biggest story of the last two years (at least). The people they were taking shots at (people like me) were right, including about this video clip.

But it seems that’s never going to happen. Some folks are going to keep claiming their examination of the trees was pretty darn good even as the forest of Biden’s mental competency is on fire all around them.