It seems until the election of President Donald Trump in 2016, it was a common belief that anything presented on video was true. Since then, thanks to lying by editing, most people have learned the hard lesson that you cannot trust all evidence presented in the news at face value. On the flip side, the power of editing events can be applied to individuals productively in their own lives.
Trump
Donald Trump (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Although many other examples could be used, the media lies about Trump were so outlandish and blatant that they formed a treasure trove for anthropological studies of propaganda for decades to come. The wildest of them all is the “fine people” hoax, in which careful editing out of context made it sound like Trump said neo-Nazis in Charlottesville were “very fine people.” By adding in the deleted elements, one finds that he said the exact opposite: “and I am not talking about the white nationalists and the neo-Nazis because they should be condemned totally.”
Another famous example is the “drink bleach” hoax, where selective editing made it sound like he recommended people to drink bleach to cure COVID-19. If you read the deleted material, it becomes clear that he was talking about an experimental treatment of introducing disinfecting UV light into the lungs. He did not recommend it but merely mentioned as a possible future treatment.
Don’t forget the Covington Kids hoax, where the media showed a clip of what purported to be a teenage white supremacist Trump supporter mocking a Native American. The complete video showed the opposite: innocent Catholic kids waiting for a bus being harassed by political activists.
The Beatles
In 1970, the Beatles movie Let It Be was released, showing a musical group with inner conflicts headed for a break-up. In 2021, director Peter Jackson released a new documentary based on the same raw footage called Get Back. This movie, however, portrayed the group as a creative powerhouse with a great collaborative spirit. The only difference between these two documentaries is the editing, and yet they tell two completely different stories. Context matters.
History
Historians edit, too. In so doing, they create the narrative they want the reader to know. Consider two completely different accounts of the same events: In the first account, the West is uniquely evil, having invented slavery and oppressed women and people of color, causing misery and havoc everywhere. Criminals founded America in 1619 to pursue slavery in a stolen land. All wealth in the country was created on the backs of slaves, a system of exploitation.
In the second account, slavery, oppression, tyranny, and imperialism were ubiquitous throughout human history in every culture until the West arose. Based on Greco-Roman philosophy and Judeo-Christian values, it identified slavery and racism as evils to be banned. The West did not invent slavery – it ended it.
Life Editing
These examples show the power of editing. However, your life is also a documentary of sorts. Your experiences are your raw footage, and from that you selectively emphasize events you want to remember and edit out the parts you choose to ignore. Everyone does this, and the only choice is the degree to which you do it honestly and constructively.
For instance, you could see your life in historical context and appreciate the enormous privilege of being born in an era with hot running water, antibiotics, and electricity. Or you can view yourself as uniquely oppressed because you were born a woman or some other category that defines your life by victimhood.
You could see yourself as the hero of your own life struggling to overcome the challenges that living throws at you, or as a leaf in the wind, a prisoner of fate. Both narratives will be based on the same life events. Which one do you choose?
~ Read more from Caroline Adana.
