Twitter has pulled yet another string on US President Donald Trump by adding ‘manipulated media’ label on his tweet.
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) reports the President’s tweet featured a doctored video clip supposedly meant to be a news item from CNN of two kids.
The original video, which went viral on social media in 2019, showed a black toddler and a white toddler running towards each other and hugging.
It was published with the headline “These two toddlers are showing us what real-life besties look like” on CNN’s website last year.
The clip shared in Trump’s tweet first shows the part where one of those toddlers is seen running ahead of the other.
A CNN chyron with the captions “terrified toddler runs from racist baby” and “Racist baby probably a Trump voter” were then appended to the video.
The tweeted video, with more than 7.7 million views and 1,25,000 retweets, then goes on to show the original video and concludes: “America is not the problem. Fake news is.”
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— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 19, 2020
“We may label Tweets containing synthetic and manipulated media to help people understand their authenticity and to provide additional context,” Twitter says in an explanation of its policies posted on its website.
The microblogging platform has been under fierce scrutiny from the Trump administration since it fact-checked Trump’s tweets about unsubstantiated claims of mail-in voting fraud.
Twitter has also labelled a Trump tweet about protests in Minneapolis as “glorifying violence.”
The president, who has battled Twitter and other tech companies over alleged censorship of conservative voices on social media platforms, said in late May he would propose legislation to potentially scrap or weaken the law shielding Internet companies, in an extraordinary attempt to regulate outlets where he has been criticised.
Here's how CNN actually covered this video https://t.co/tzW7YbygBw
— Adrian D. Garcia (@adriandgarcia) June 19, 2020