The Media & Their Narratives.

[BIAD]

BBC Verify -a department that British licence-payers never asked for, have an article
that is supposed to support their preferred narrative. Trump -Bad, Harris -Good.

Trump falsely claims Harris crowd was faked



'Donald Trump has falsely claimed a crowd which gathered to see Vice President Kamala Harris
speak in Michigan last week “didn’t exist” and an image showing it was AI generated. The picture
in question shows a large crowd at the Democratic presidential nominee's rally in Detroit.

Mr Trump, the Republican taking on the vice-president in November's election, said on his Truth Social
platform, external that it was a fake and there was “nobody” there waiting for her. However, in multiple
other images and videos, some taken by people present but also by TV news teams and agency
photographers, you can see a large crowd of people at the event.

Multiple images show a large crowd
BBC presenter Sumi Somaskanda took the picture below at the rally and says: “People were literally
packed in and the crowd stretched out onto the airfield.” Several of other photographs taken at the event
by Getty Images, external show a large crowd there.

Video footage taken by several independent media organisations, including NBC News and PBS, show
similar scenes. Local media outlet MLive covered the event and estimated that about 15,000 people,
external were at the rally which was held at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

Many people who were also there posted pictures on X which showed them in a big crowd, including
a Michigan state Democrat lawmaker, external who said there were “throngs of people”.

Where did the image come from?
The first version we could find of the photo Mr Trump has highlighted was posted on X by a Harris
campaign staffer, external, Bhavik Lathia, on 7 August. Mr Lathia says the picture was sent to him.
BBC Verify checked the metadata of this image, which confirmed it was taken on an iPhone 12 Pro
Max device on 7 August at 18:28 local time.

“I can confirm that this was taken by Harris campaign staff and not modified by AI in any way,” a
campaign official told the BBC. The campaign also sent us several other images taken by the same
person at the same spot, including the one below.



This image was taken a minute earlier from the same angle, in which the same crowd is visible but
covered in shadow.by another campaign official. The Harris campaign confirmed this and sent us
what they say was the original photo below.

We’ve asked the Harris campaign whether the image which was questioned by Mr Trump was brightened
to expose the crowds covered by shadow or changed in any other way. There’s no evidence that the Harris
campaign edited the image to make the crowd appear larger.

There have also been suggestions online that several elements of the photo show it has been manipulated
using AI. These include the absence of a crowd in a reflection on the side of the plane, and that there is no
identification number on the plane’s tail. On the first point, other photos taken by news agencies show the
same view in the reflection on the side of the plane without a visible crowd.

A Getty photograph taken from the reverse angle looking towards the crowd shows a clear area on the tarmac
in front of the plane as Ms Harris and her running-mate Tim Walz walk away from it.
It is possible that the reflection on the side of the plane is mainly of this area of empty tarmac.

Questions have also been raised online about why there is no identification number on the tail of Air Force
Two - the vice president’s plane. However, the number is also absent from other pictures taken at the Detroit
event, and footage of the plane, external at other events recently also show it without a number on its tail.

Prof Hany Farid, a specialist in image analysis at UC Berkeley, has examined the photograph using software
designed to detect AI-generated images and says “we found no evidence that this image is AI-generated or
digitally altered”...'

BBC:

But...


 Flat sides?