Drunk Pelosi Video Is a Fake

If you happen to see a video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stammering through a press conference as you make your rounds through social media, be aware that the video is a fake. The video of Pelosi at a press conference was altered to make it appear as though the speaker was stammering and repeating herself. Accompanying descriptions often claim that she was intoxicated when she gave the remarks.

None other than Fox News is on record with a description of the fake news video’s origins. Fox reports that the three-minute clip was from a speech yesterday at the Center for American Progress in which Pelosi described President Trump’s angry exit from a meeting with Democrats about infrastructure. Per Fox, the video was uploaded to Facebook on a page called “Politics WatchDog.” At press time, the video is still posted on the page and has 2.4 million views. Similar videos have been removed from YouTube and Twitter.

Fox cites the Washington Post, saying that the video was apparently “slowed down to 75 percent from the original speed and that her pitch was also manipulated in order to present her under the influence.”

“It is striking that such a simple manipulation can be so effective and believable to some,” Berkeley computer science and digital forensics expert Hany Farid told the CNN. “While I think that deep-fake technology poses a real threat, this type of low-tech fake shows that there is a larger threat of misinformation campaigns -- too many of us are willing to believe the worst in people that we disagree with.”

A separate fact-check article by Politifact notes that unaltered audio is available from C-SPAN and is noticeably different than the audio accompanying the video, which has “more slurred and lisping than the one on C-SPAN.”

The original altered video posted to Facebook is captioned, “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on President Trump walking out infrastructure meeting: ‘It was very, very, very strange.’” The clip closes with Pelosi saying that the meeting with Trump was very strange.

In a subsequent post, Politics WatchDog seemed to acknowledge that the video was fake, saying, “Just for the record [sic] we never claimed that Speaker Pelosi was drunk. We can’t control what the people in the comments think. It’s a free country. For your information [sic] we are not a conservative news outlet.”

The fake nature of the page is also apparent by a poll that the group posted which asks, “Should the Pelosi video be taking [sic] down?” Legitimate news sites rarely leave obvious grammatical errors uncorrected.

A spokesman for Pelosi told CNN, “We're not going to comment on this sexist trash.”

Yesterday, President Trump tweeted a different video of Pelosi that had also been altered under the caption “PELOSI STAMMERS THROUGH NEWS CONFERENCE.” This video, which was originally aired on Fox News’ “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” strings together a series of the speaker’s flubs in a speech. Although altered through selective editing, this video does not appear to be digitally manipulated.

While I am no fan of Speaker Pelosi and don’t agree with her policy prescriptions, I do value truth over blatant lies, even when they are about the opposition. The “drunk Pelosi” video is an example of the worst inclinations of the right-wing media. The fact that some conservatives and Republicans actually believe that the video is authentic is a far worse reflection on the right than the doctored video is on Mrs. Pelosi.

Fake news remains a real problem, as do blatantly false attempts at character assassination on both sides. Remember, kids, when surfing the internet, if it seems too stupid to be true, it probably is. However, in this day and age, you should probably check the source just to be sure.

Originally published on The Resurgent

United email sheds light on dragging incident

The nation was shocked yesterday by the sight of a man being dragged down the aisle of a United airliner. Now an email from United CEO Oscar Munoz to United employees sheds light on the other side of the story. The Munoz email was revealed by CNBC’s Ryan Ruggiero in a tweet that reprints the letter to employees.

According to Munoz, the incident occurred on Sunday, April 9, at Chicago’s O’Hare airport (KORD) on United Express Flight 3411. It is important to note here that a United Express flight is not an actual United Airlines flight, but a codeshare. The flight status tool on United’s website reveals that the flight was operated by Republic Airlines, a regional airline based in Indianapolis.

That the flight was on board a regional airline is apparent at a glance in the video from the seating arrangements, which are clearly on board a regional jet. Although most passengers don’t realize it, if you fly on anything smaller than a Boeing 737 or Airbus A319, you are probably not flying with the airline that you bought the ticket from, but with one of their regional contractors. Regional employees are generally less experienced and less well trained than mainline carrier employees. Because this incident did occur at a United hub, mainline United customer service agents may have been involved as well.

Munoz goes on to say that the problem arose when gate agents were informed that four Republic crewmembers needed to board the flight to Louisville, Kentucky (KSDF). This apparently occurred after the passengers had already been boarded.

A confidential source within United Airlines says that crewmembers were deadheading. This means that they were traveling while on official airline duty to fly a return flight the next day. Ordinarily, deadheading crewmembers are assigned seats before passengers are boarded to avoid problems like the one Sunday. This “shouldn't have happened since an out-of-place crew situation is usually known before boarding starts.”

The passenger was not bumped due to airline passengers with buddy passes. Passengers who travel on buddy passes have the lowest boarding priority. These are also called “nonrev” or “nonrevenue” passengers and airlines will not bump a revenue passenger for them. As an airline pilot, I remember being pushed back from the gate and seeing my wife and newborn son staring glumly at the departing plane after their nonrev/space available seats were taken by paying passengers from a canceled flight.

Munoz wrote, “We sought volunteers and then followed our involuntary denial of boarding process (including offering up to $1,000 in compensation) and when we approached one of these passengers to explain apologetically that he was being denied boarding, he raised his voice and refused to comply with crewmember instructions.”

“He was approached a few more times after that in order to gain his compliance to come off the aircraft, and each time he refused and became more and more disruptive and belligerent,” Munoz continued. “Our agents were left with no choice but to call Chicago Aviation Security Officers to assist in removing the customer from the flight. He repeatedly declined to leave.”

“Chicago Aviation Security Officers were unable to gain his cooperation and physically removed him from the flight as he continued to resist,” Munoz said. He even claims the man was “running back onto the aircraft in defiance of both our crew and security officials.”

The videos released so far begin with the security officers removing the man from his seat and do not corroborate Munoz’s claims that the passenger was belligerent to United employees. If a passenger videoed the earlier exchanges, those clips may be forthcoming. In any case, the other passengers will probably be questioned by authorities to determine what led up to the incident.

Once the man became belligerent and refused to comply with instructions, there was no way that he was going to stay on the plane. Airline captains have always had wide latitude to remove unruly and disruptive passengers. This is especially true in the post 9/11 world. No flight crew wants to deal with an aggressive and uncompliant passenger at 35,000 feet.

Removal of disruptive passengers is for their safety as well as everyone else’s. If a passenger becomes uncontrollable in the air, they might end up dead. In several cases, aggressive passengers have been restrained by crew and other passengers. Sometimes those passengers have died while being restrained. Uncontrollable passengers might also be shot by an air marshal. This happened in Miami in 2005. If the unruly passenger survives, they can be fined up to $25,000 by the FAA.

In aviation, we talk about “accident chains.” It usually isn’t one thing that leads to an accident and that was the case here. The problem started with United choosing to use contractors instead of its own employees. There was an apparent breakdown in communication that led the gate agent to board the passengers before assigning seats to the deadhead crew. None of the passengers volunteered to take the later flight which required that the airline pick people to bump. The alternative was canceling a flight full of passengers the next day. There was also an apparent failure by the security officers to follow proper procedure while removing the passenger. Finally, there was the choice by the passenger to refuse to follow lawful instructions and to resist orders.

As the United source asked, “Why this guy couldn't just get up and call his lawyer on a $300 Uber ride to Louisville, I don't know. What is wrong with grown adults who in the face of law-enforcement officers, refuse to comply with instructions? And then they are shocked when it gets ugly.”

An additional lesson from the incident is that cellphone videos, while often compelling and sometimes appalling, seldom tell the whole story. In this situation, like many police shootings and fights, the camera records the moment of violence, but without the context of why it occurred. Without the full story, it’s impossible to determine what really happened or why. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

Chilling video shows plane crash in Taiwan

The crash of a TransAsia ATR-72 today in Taiwan was captured in a dramatic video from a dashboard camera in a taxi. The 25 second video, along with another longer but more distant video, can be seen on Uproxx.com.

The video shows the turboprop airliner descending rapidly across a bridge in front of the taxi. As it descends, the airplane rolls approximately 90 degrees onto its left wing. As the plane passes in front of the taxi, its left wingtip and tail strike the road in front of the car before it disappears from view.

According to a report from BBC, TransAsia Airways Flight 235, also referred to as GE235, crashed shortly after takeoff from Taipei Shongshan Airport. Pilots radioed that there was an “engine flameout” according a New York Times report. After passing in front of the taxi’s camera, the airplane came to rest in the Keelung River, a short distance from the airport. The flight was enroute to Kinmen and carried 53 passengers and five crew. At least 19 people are reported dead.

The New York Times reported that both pilots were very experienced. The 42-year-old captain had 4,914 hours including 3,400 in the ATR. The first officer was 45-years-old and had 6,922 hours with 6,500 in ATRs. Nevertheless, preliminary information appears to indicate that the airplane suffered an engine failure on takeoff and that the crew was not able to maintain control.

This is the second fatal crash for TransAsia in six months. Last July, another ATR crashed while landing in a monsoon. That crash killed 48 people.

The ATR 72 is built by the French and Italian company, ATR. The type first flew in 1988, but the New Times reports that the accident aircraft, an ATR 72-600, was only a year old. Although the ATR was once flown by American airlines, it is now principally operated in the US as a cargo freighter by FedEx. In 1994, an American Eagle ATR crashed in Roselawn, Ind. That crash was attributed to airframe icing.

Recovery efforts are still underway in the TransAsia crash. Several of the plane’s passengers are still missing.

 

Read the full article on Examiner.com