Facebook labeled a video shared by President Donald Trump of former VP Joe Biden stammering as “partly false information” after the Joe Biden campaign and liberal media condemned the platform.
Former Vice President Biden was caught on video seemingly endorsing President Donald Trump for re-election. After making the confusing statement, Biden tried to correct it, but the video cuts off before that.
Biden’s campaign and liberal media outlets condemned the video as deceptively edited misinformation. The clip, posted on Twitter March 7 by White House social media director Dan Scavino, showed Biden stammering: “Because we can not get re-elect, we can not win this re-election. Excuse me, we can only re-elect Donald Trump.” Facebook has since labeled the video as “partly false information.”
Facebook seems to be following suit under liberal pressure after Twitter labeled the video clip as “manipulated media.” When reached out to for comment, Twitter staff replied that “this Tweet was labeled based on our Synthetic and Manipulated Media policy.”
Twitter, however. has allowed a video from the Biden campaign which mischaracterized Trump as claiming the coronavirus was a “hoax.” A Politico article featuring this same claim was fact-checked on Facebook, at the behest of the Daily Caller, a move which outraged members of the liberal media.
Facebook released its own policy on “deepfakes” and manipulated media back in January, but it did not immediately label the Trump post as such.
Facebook reportedly told CNBC that “Fact-checkers rated this video as partly false, so we are reducing its distribution and showing warning labels with more context for people who see it, try to share it, or already have.” Fakebook later added that “As we announced last year, the same applies if a politician shares the video, if it was otherwise fact-checked when shared by others on Facebook.”
CNBC, apparently, could not even bear to include the entire quote: “Excuse me. We can only reelect Donald Trump if in fact we get engaged in this circular firing squad here. It’s gotta be a positive campaign.”
The outlet then proceeded to not provide the entire context of the clip shared by Trump’s surrogate. Instead, CNBC wrote the following: “Scavino kept the manipulated video short. ‘We can only reelect Donald Trump,’ the Democratic front-runner appeared to say.”
CNN focused on the exact same segment of Biden’s quote: "Excuse me. We can only re-elect Donald Trump." The outlet then went on to claim that “What the former vice president actually said was this: ‘Excuse me. We can only re-elect Donald Trump if in fact we get engaged in this circular firing squad here. It's gotta be a positive campaign.’” And like CNBC, CNN also did not provide the entire context of the clip shared by Scavino.
Neither outlet could bring itself to quote Biden’s stammering in its entirety. Biden said in the clip posted by Scavino: “Turn this primary from a campaign that’s about negative attacks into one about what we’re for. Because we can not get re-elect, we can not win this re-election. Excuse me, we can only re-elect Donald Trump.” The video cut off before he seemingly doubled-down and improvised on his gaffe that Donald Trump can only be re-elected “if in fact we get engaged in this circular firing squad here. It’s gotta be a positive campaign.” The entire speech is viewable on YouTube.
