Last week, President Donald Trump threatened to sue the British Broadcasting Corporation for splicing together two of his sound bites to make it sound like one.
He could have blamed the French.
After all, it was a French magician, George Méliès, who, in the late 19th century, accidentally invented the editing technique that ultimately led, 130 years later, to the BBC’s faux pas.
Méliès was filming a street scene in France when his crank-up camera jammed. He eventually got it rolling again and continued shooting.
Only when he developed the film did he see that a carriage that had been in his lens suddenly turned into a hearse.
Of course, we now know it was two scenes that the camera, by stopping and starting, had accidentally — yet seamlessly — edited together. Kind of like what the BBC did.
Minus the “accidentally” part.
What a difference a splice makes.
Did BBC intend The Edit?
Let’s talk about The Edit. It is journalism’s most significant and least discussed shaper of public opinion. In its most benign form, The Edit — jump cutting, cutaways, trimmed sound bites, selective quotes — simply shortens things without changing the meaning or intent.
In its most harmful form, The Edit completely distorts.
But in all cases, The Edit it is not, as journalists like to aspire to, the purist reflection of the truth.
Which is what makes it so dangerous.
The BBC shot itself in the foot when, in a show last year called “Panorama,” it stitched together two sound bites from Trump’s infamous Jan. 6, 2021, speech.
In reality, Trump said, “We are going to walk down to the Capitol and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
Then, over 50 minutes later, he made the comment, “And we fight. We fight like hell.”
The “Panorama” program took part of the first quote, connected it to the second, and aired this:
“We are going to walk down to the Capitol … and I’ll be with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
When played that way, it sounds like Trump was marching in front of an angry army, exhorting it to fight like hell every step of the way.
But he never actually said that. And, no matter how awful the events of Jan. 6 may have been, no amount of mea culpas will convince any skeptic that the BBC did this in error.
At best, whoever edited it believed that the two sentences were essentially the same sentiment. At worst, it was deliberately done to make Trump look bad. (Or worse than he already did.)
Either way, it’s not honest journalism. But it is hardly the first, tenth, thousandth or millionth time such a thing has been done.
Editing is part of journalism
As a journalist, let me be blunt. Everyone in our business edits in some fashion.
There’s the obvious video cuts, sound trims or print ellipsis which reduce the length of a comment. There’s the “cutaway,” where the TV camera goes to the reporter’s face nodding, while the sound of the interviewee is being cut from one point and attached to another.
But there’s more. Whenever reporters decide which quotes or sound bites to include and which to leave out, they are editing. Whenever editors decide what part of the story to reflect in the headline or commercial tease, they are editing.
Whenever higher-ups choose what page to place the story, or where it goes in the newscast, they are editing.
Because all these decisions affect the way the reader/viewer/listener perceives the otherwise “pure” truth of the story, which would be to basically hold a mirror up from its first moment to its last.
Trump may play the aggrieved party over the BBC incident, but it is hardly new. Last year, Democrats filed formal complaints with Fox News about their editing of a Trump interview on the Jeffrey Epstein files. We all remember the complaints about CBS’ editing of its Kamala Harris and Kristi Noem interviews, allegedly to make one look bad and one good.
In 2012, NBC News was sued after an editor spliced George Zimmerman’s emergency 911 call concerning Travon Martin. In the actual call, Zimmerman told the dispatcher, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.”
When the dispatcher asked Zimmerman if the person was white, Black or Hispanic, he said, “He looks Black.”
The NBC edit had Zimmerman saying, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks Black.”
What a difference a splice makes.
‘Consistent application’ not always applied
As a result of the BBC’s “Panorama” debacle, its director general and head of news both resigned. The BBC has apologized to Trump (he’d demanded this) but has refused to agree to pay him compensation (which he’s also demanded).
Britain’s culture secretary — yes, they have one of those — told the media that the BBC’s editorial standards were “in some cases not robust enough and in other cases not consistently applied.”
Those words, “consistently applied,” may be the most insidious part of this whole problem. We journalists can hide behind “everybody edits, there’s not enough space to print/play everything!”
But choosing what image to keep and what to cut, what sound to play first and what immediately follows, where to put the ellipsis in the paragraph and where to pick up — “consistent application” — are all individual decisions that, quite often, are not scrutinized enough, and can be the difference in presenting someone as positive or as negative.
Sometimes journalists figure “it’s obvious these are two different moments.” But that is assuming the viewer understands how the business works. Too often, people just watch a string of comments by a newsmaker, stitched together by a news outlet, and assume that everything that person says is of that ilk. (Cable news programs do this all the time.)
And nobody — except perhaps the injured party — complains.
More of us should. Like many things with Trump, the president is an unlikely (and sometimes unlikeable) example of a point that is still important. And in this case, critical.
In a world of artificial intelligence, where we very soon will not be able to tell what is real and what is not — even in front of our eyes — trusting journalists with what they present may be the only way of getting to the truth.
With such a heavy burden in our hands, we should be highly careful of where we make our cuts. And ask ourselves if, like Méliès’ broken camera, we are turning a carriage into a hearse. The editing button is not meant to be a weapon. Unfortunately, it makes a very good one.
Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates with his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchalbom on x.com.
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