The White House accuses the New York Post of publishing a video on social media and later a front-page story claiming that President Joe Biden walked away as he and other world leaders watched a skydiving demonstration at the G7 summit in Italy.
The Post video contained the message: “President Biden appeared to drift off course at the G7 summit in Italy, and officials had to force him to refocus.”
But White House spokesman Andrew Bates pointed out that the video shared by the Washington Post was cropped and did not convey the context of what Biden was doing: He was talking to and congratulating another skydiver while some of the other world leaders were watching another jumper.
Bates shared the video with the wider angle, writing, “The Murdoch media is so desperate to distract from @POTUS’s record that they’re just lying. Here they are using an artificially narrow image to hide from viewers that he just saw a skydiving demonstration. He congratulates one of the jumpers and gives a thumbs up.” Bates also included the video clip from the post.
The video was shared across the right-wing spectrum, including for a digital story written for Sinclair Broadcast Group’s The National Desk and posted on local broadcast websites. That story picked up the Post’s cropped video. The story also referenced claims about an incident involving Biden last week at the D-Day celebrations. The video showed Biden pausing before sitting down; right-wing figures claimed the president was confused because there was no chair. In fact, a longer version of the video shows the president pausing as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was about to be introduced. The video then showed Biden sitting down in that exact spot.
The New York Post also printed the G7 incident on the cover of its print edition with the headline “Meander in Chief.”
Bates later wrote on X: “Rupert Murdoch is still jealous of a younger man running a more complex company.”
Neither a spokesman for the Post, which is owned by News Corp., nor a spokesman for News Corp. responded to requests for comment.
“Beware of cheap fakes… and any malicious actors who publish them,” wrote White House communications director Ben LaBolt.
Last week, the Sinclair channels picked up a Wall Street Journal story that said Biden had “backtracked” on reports of the president in certain meetings with lawmakers. But the White House and other critics pointed out that the story included only one major source, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
The website Popular Information has compiled videos of Sinclair anchors in various markets reading identical text to the Journal article. Good morning, Joeamong others, has published the compilation.
Sinclair called the criticism “outrageous and offensive” and claimed that “this story has been reported from both sides of the political spectrum.” The script included some of the Democrats’ counterarguments to the Journal’s story. The station group also defended the use of the same script at different stations, calling it a “common practice in the industry” and noting that affiliates “often use a pre-written script for a package provided by another media source.”