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Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

CNN Technical director told us as much - Money & power.

https://www.projectveritas.com/news/part-2-cnn-director-char...

Project Veritas has a history of being so wildly deceitful[1] that if they said the sky was blue, I'd want to look outside to check myself first before I believed them.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas#Content

Linking to a Wikipedia article doesn't seem like a great way to convey an accusation, especially when you don't want to address the content.

I suppose you don't want to also link to the defamation lawsuit Project Veritas recently won against The New York Times.

Concerning the actual content, I don't see how you can chalk this up to selective editing, the guy goes on for quite a while describing CNN's tactics.

What context do you think was left out?

> recently won

No, that's ongoing. All they've "won" was that a judge denied a motion to dismiss the suit.

> What context do you think was left out?

I'm not going to waste time looking at the video in the first place, so don't bother asking.

Maybe, but ignore Vertias involvement and just concentrate on the raw footage they captured. You can't just fake a conversation like that without fearsome technology or maybe bribery.

> ignore Vertias involvement

Sorry, no. They've tainted the well too much to do that.

I’m guessing you’re probably infinitely less critical of the standard ‘respected’ mainstream media.

‘Project Veritas Bad’ is a becoming an increasingly myopic heuristic. Probably something better would be to think that PV is complicated, and institutions have the potential to be seriously predatory and anti-social in the broadest sense.

So you'll blindly reject data based on ideological disagreement with the person filming? Sounds like Veritas isn't the biased one here.

translation: I don't like what Project Veritas presents, so it must be wildly deceitful, and I need not consider the issue any further.

Honestly this reminds me a lot of some numbers Pew tracks. They look at crime and perception of crime. For quite some time crime rates have been falling dramatically but perception of crime has increased.[0] There's even a pretty strong political correlation[1]. But that should be no surprise for anyone that watches Fox and CNN. Though one thing I saw at the beginning of the pandemic is that CNN really went all-in in adopting Fox's strategy: fear. I'm a bit worried when the major news sources are selling fear over reality (tricky subject). It also has a big effect on how other countries perceive us and what it is like living in the US. We see so many from Europe, China, India, and elsewhere think America is a lawless land with death around every corner, and I don't blame them if that's what we're pushing with our news. If we consider cultural warfare, I'd say it looks like we are trying to purposefully lose on that front.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/20/facts-about...

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/16/voters-perc...

Just to be clear .. a technical director has approximately 0 to say about programming decisions. They deal with sound / lighting / computing equipment.

Indeed, but they can definitely provide insight as to what's going on on set.

I wouldn't say zero. He works there, he gets the feel there.

You have to wonder why did he said all of those specific things. Do you think he made them all up on the spot?

Those things he said line up with their programming (the death toll counters, etc.).

CNN's 24/7 death clock seems to have disappeared when Biden was inaugurated. It's almost as if .... :-)

It's wild to me that people think there was some big anti-Trump effort with Covid news -- there were 3,300 people per day dying of the disease in January, now there are 1/4th - 1/5th as many. Maybe, just maybe, that's why the news has changed focus?

There were a lot fewer people per day dying last September than today, but CNN's death clock was 24/7 then.

https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-daily-deaths

A bias source with an axe to grind and a history of deceptive editing

That's a straw man argument. I wont necessarily dispute the axe to grind, but can you provide proof when "deceptive editing" occurred?

Currently Project Veritas is in multiple lawsuits disputing that claim.

Most recently, in Project Veritas vs New York Times, the NYT claimed their articles contain journalistic "opinions" without notifying readers. Meaning they made claims they can't back up:

https://assets.ctfassets.net/syq3snmxclc9/maEy58HDFCR7qdtFOb...

I don't think it's fair to dismiss the content of their videos out of hand. While I disagree with the tactics, this is essentially undercover journalism and you can hear longs stretches of the CNN technical director discussing the mood / methods on set.

> but can you provide proof when "deceptive editing" occurred?

The Wikipedia page has plenty of examples and sources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas#Content

I've reviewed this and none of them seem either (a) claim they are deceptive at all or (b) are proven deceptive. You also have to ignore the pending lawsuits (Project Veritas vs NYT) and the fact Project Veritas hasn't been successfully sued for defamation or anything like that.

Wikipedia itself is not a reputable source and frankly the examples don't actually show deception to the audience. I'll repeat what I asked someone else.

> Who edits wikipedia? There's some serious concerns there, by the co-founder of wikipedia. Basically, you can hire firms to edit wikipedia relatively easily and there's some extreme bias on anything even remotely political.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWQaVx5mGco

On the topic of deception...

The main "deception" I see is editing out sections of the video which had no bearing on the story. This is how all news is conducted.

One example labeled as a deception appears to be mentioning the thumbnail of a video:

> He framed the undercover recordings with a preface of him dressed in a "pimp" outfit, which he also wore in TV media interviews. This gave viewers, including the media, the impression that he had dressed that way when speaking to ACORN workers. However, he actually entered the ACORN offices in conservative street clothes (the sleeve of his dress shirt is visible on camera)

Does that change how the ACORN employees reacted? Is it better that they broke the law with him in different clothes (he also went to 6 different locations, dressed differently each time). This has no bearing on the story, because the ACORN employee(s) were still breaking the law - the point. The story was not about how they treated people differently based on attire.

Their wikipedia has a long list of incidents that I won't relist but it's not a straw man to discuss the credibility of a source.

Who edits wikipedia? There's some serious concerns there, by the co-founder of wikipedia. Basically, you can hire firms to edit wikipedia relatively easily and there's some extreme bias on anything even remotely political.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWQaVx5mGco

There are links at the bottom under References if you're interested in learning more about the context. Tim Poole and Project Veritas videos aren't going to convince anyone who doesn't already agree with you.

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