The Planned Parenthood 'sting' videos are total bullpucky, but that won't stop the GOP

Daily Kos Staff

Friday August 28, 2015 · 9:30 AM PDT

2015/08/28 · 09:30

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) (2nd R) addresses reporters after a House Republican caucus meeting at the U.S. Capitol in Washington December 2, 2014. Also pictured are Repuplican House Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) (L), House Majority Leader Kevin Mc

Reading the full expert analysis conducted by Fusion GPS into the "sting" videos by anti-abortion extremists posing as medical company reps and released by a group calling itself the Center for Medical Progress leads one to believe that these would-be stingers are not all that bright. Certainly they're not technologically adept. But most certainly, they are extremely arrogant in their conviction that they don't actually have to do it right. Republicans will run with it, no matter what.

Fusion GPS created three teams experts in "video forensics, production, and transcription." These teams reviewed the initial five secretly recorded videos. Their experts include "Grant Fredericks who is a contract instructor of video sciences at the FBI National Academy and one of the most experienced video experts in North America." They contracted with an outside transcription company to watch and transcribe the videos, and did not tell the company who they were working with, so no possibility of bias could be introduced there. What they found was some astonishingly sloppy work.

Collectively, the five videotapes of Planned Parenthood staff have at least 42 splices where content is cut and edited together to make it appear to be a seamless conversation.

In some cases, these splices completely change the meaning of statements. On one video, a Planned Parenthood staff member’s remarks about lab protocols were edited to make it sound like she was talking about changing abortion procedures. Phrases on the tape were isolated and removed, stringing together unrelated sentences to change the meaning.
Anti-abortion activists used the doctored “quote” to support false claims that she was talking about changing how an abortion would be done, and the “quote” was published by mainstream media as if it were real.

On one tape, a Planned Parenthood staff member in Colorado says 13 separate times that any arrangements related to fetal tissue donation need to be reviewed by attorneys and follow all laws—and all 13 are edited out of the video.

On another tape, a Planned Parenthood staff member in Texas says nine separate times that there is no “profit” related to fetal tissue donation—and all nine are edited out of the video.

It's easy for the analysts to pinpoint all these discrepancies because the hidden cameras used had both time stamps and frame counters turned on. So they could clearly see where—in the long, supposedly raw and supposedly unedited—chunks were missing. There were instances where audio didn't match video, where camera angles and lighting changed in the middle of conversations, and time stamps revealed big jumps. These are not, the analysts conclude, the result of mistakes or using the equipment incorrectly. They are "intentional post-production edits" which "mean they have no evidentiary value in a legal context and cannot be relied upon for any official inquiries," and that they "lack credibility as journalistic products."

Head below the fold for more.

They also make a point of highlighting the instances in which CMP's transcription flat-out makes up what PP staff is saying in the video. In one from Colorado, the transcription says a staffer says "It's a baby." Professional transcriptionists couldn't make any intelligible statement out of that segment, which is full of background chatter. It fall completely out of context with the discussion occurring in the segment and that the interjection at this point "simply makes no sense." There's a similar problem with an interjection of "it's a boy" or "another boy" in the CMS transcript. The phrase is there this time, but that "the statement lacks context and may have been elicited by CMP’s own operatives, who engaged in elaborate efforts to bait Planned Parenthood personnel into using language that could be portrayed as incriminating or otherwise inappropriate." There are more than 30 minutes missing in the tape just prior to this statement, so that's a good bet.

Indeed, the experts remark on how often the "available tape shows that CMP operatives repeatedly attempted to bait Planned Parenthood staff into discussing the physiology of fetal specimens in lay terms." Here they consulted with experienced reality and documentary television producer, Scott Goldie. He pointed out in all of the short videos, almost all of the dialog about compensation comes from the CMP actors. "In all four interviews, CMP operatives repeatedly bring up compensation, often trying to bait Planned Parenthood representatives into making mercenary statements or naming a higher price for donated tissue. […] The short videos take a great deal of dialog out of context so as to substantively and significantly alter the meaning of the dialog contained in the long videos."

It's amazing and kind of depressing that these guys really didn't even try to hide their tracks, probably because they realized that all they needed was the initial spark to set the process of investigations against Planned Parenthood and defunding efforts to start. It wouldn't matter if they were totally debunked once the process was moving forward. One would like to think that congressional leaders would have enough integrity now that the videos have been totally debunked to stop the persecution of Planned Parenthood, but one is also enough of a realist to know that ain't happening. Not when it's so clear that congressional Republicans have been colluding with CMP all along.

The Planned Parenthood 'sting' videos are total bullpucky, but that won't stop the GOP

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