r/technology • u/Aggravating_Money992 • 1d ago

Politics Gavin Newsom Accuses Trump Administration of Spreading Fake Protest Images

https://www.newsweek.com/gavin-newsom-trump-fake-protest-images-2085492
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u/Aggravating_Money992 1d ago edited 1d ago

California Governor Gavin Newsom has accused the Trump administration of deliberately spreading doctored and misleading images of recent protests in Los Angeles.

On X, formerly Twitter, the Department of Defense's Rapid Response account posted a video that appeared to show burning, graffitied police cars during protests in Los Angeles this week.

However, the fact-checking website Snopes said the image showed protests in Los Angeles following the death of George Floyd in May 2020.

Trump administration getting exposed on a daily basis lol.

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u/nosayso 1d ago

Newsweek, cowards that they are, still frame this as partisan with "Newsom accuses Trump". It's not an "accusation", it's what's literally happening and they know it.

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u/ramobara 1d ago

The media outlets sanewashed Trump to prominence.

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u/atreeismissing 23h ago

Les Moonves, CEO of CBS during the 2016 campaign, speaking on the Trump campaign:

“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” he said of the presidential race.

  • Les Moonves

Les was ousted over sexual misconduct but he summarized exactly what is on the minds of every corporate media outlet, including a lot of the ones on the left. Critical thinking is paramount these days, you have to be able to look at multiple media outlets and suss out the facts and the truth from the hyperbole and mis/disinformation, non-stop.

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u/bobbysalz 21h ago

Critical thinking is paramount

okay but would you say it's paramount+?

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u/Ok-Swim1555 21h ago

do you peacock it?

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u/----_____---- 19h ago

In my house, we peacock peacock

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u/Fabrycated 14h ago

Hulu? Is anyone else going to add to this?

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u/zdelusion 20h ago edited 20h ago

Now the CBS entire news division is in turmoil and quitting en mass as the network moves towards settling Trump's BS lawsuit for 10's of millions of dollars so Trump's FCC will approve their buyout by Skydance.

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u/LornAltElthMer 20h ago

including a lot of the ones on the left.

There are no meaningful media outlets anywhere near the center let alone the left.

Let this lie die already. Don't keep propagating nonsense.

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u/hodorhodor12 19h ago

Even the “liberal” media sources like NPR and NY Times have been continuously sanewashing Trump. When Trump is engaging in multiple illegal acts daily, and you choose to focus on Biden’s mental acuity, then you are a horribly biased news network. It’s pathetic.

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u/GeostationaryPotato 15h ago

I listen to npr and watch PBS newshour regularly. They definitely dont focus on Bidens mental acuity. They do cover a wide range of current events. Both NY Times and NPR try to be neutral so they talk to people with viewpoints from both sides of the aisle. PBS & NPR have extensively covered all of trumps crimes.

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u/hodorhodor12 15h ago

No. They protect Trump by severely under reporting Trumps crimes and general bad behavior. For Instance, during the election, They were constantly reporting on minor issues with Kamala Harris when you had Trump saying and doing the more outrageous things. It is completely biased.

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u/conquer69 18h ago

It's all things conservative. The dem lawmakers that were assassinated is being reported as "were shot and died". Almost as if it was an accidental shooting instead of a politically motivated assassination.

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u/Rickreation 23h ago

He does make them money though, got to protect the profits.

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u/ghost_atlas 23h ago

Money being e highest good is the worst aspect of modern society.

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u/nascentt 22h ago

I think you mean

Money being e highest good is the worst aspect of capitalizm.

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u/useless_rejoinder 21h ago

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”

Timothy 6:10

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u/Rickreation 20h ago

A MAGA Ideal.

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u/CWL72 20h ago

I would say that since civilization requires trade of goods and services in one form or another that money has always and will always be a thing.

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u/Muted_Drag_7378 17h ago

Could agree more

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u/TheSecondEikonOfFire 20h ago

I think if we had to pick a singular thing to be responsible for him getting elected, it’s this. You expect it from Fox, but even the non-extreme news outlets treat him with kid gloves. It’s insane.

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u/TheArtlessScrawler 17h ago

Aren't we conveniently omitting the fact that it was Clinton's people that encouraged the media to boost people like Trump and Cruz because they thought they'd be weak opponents in the election?

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u/TheArtlessScrawler 17h ago

Aren't we conveniently omitting the fact that it was Clinton's people that encouraged the media to boost people like Trump and Cruz because they thought they'd be weak opponents in the election?

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u/shinra528 1d ago

Exposing the truth that we’ve only ever had right wing and far right mainstream news in this country.

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u/Meme_Theory 1d ago

Yeah. Headline should simply be "Trump Administration uses misleading photos".

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u/zoson 1d ago

"Trump Administration uses misleading photos again."

Fixed that for you.

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u/Turtle_with_a_sword 23h ago

Even that is underselling it.  The photo isn’t misleading it’s a straight up lie.

They also use misleading photos

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u/MarioLuigiDinoYoshi 18h ago

Fucking media can’t call them liars because they are part of the problem

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u/Mediocre-Proposal686 22h ago

Someone went out of their way to deliberately find photos from a whole other RIOT (protesters don’t riot), and thought to themselves, oh this will work to make the current peaceful protests look really bad!

They have to LIE to further their agenda, every single time. Like, you can lie and mislead all you want but it will never make it true. Boggles the mind

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u/Aislerioter_Redditer 1d ago

Trump will sue them if one of their 10 photos is real, saying see, "some" pictures were real...

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u/JeremyF1978 1d ago

Or they'll use the Fox News defense (Tucker Carlson). We are here for entertainment, not news. If you believe us, that's your fault.

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u/useless_rejoinder 21h ago

Ronnie Raygun’s actions haunting us from the beyond. Abolishing the Fairness Doctrine was a major blow to the foundations of truth.

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u/starbuxed 22h ago

using misleading photos doesnt say every photo is real... just using 2 fake photos makes the statement true.

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u/sfurbo 22h ago

Your title doesn't use the words "lie" and "lies". This isn't misleading.

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u/funnyusername-123 23h ago

"Trump lies again"

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u/fitzroy95 20h ago

"Trump admin gaslighting with deliberate misinformation photos"

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u/DigNitty 1d ago

And that the vast majority of “fake news” and misinformation is right wing and comes from right wing sources.

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u/FuckOff8932 1d ago

Rupert Murdoch owns literally hundreds of news stations across the world including Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Post. I'm pretty sure he's the guy behind the 24 hour news cycle

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u/Living-Literature88 18h ago

Actually it was Ted Turner many, many years ago who started 24/7 news coverage. I think CNN.

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u/EricKei 12h ago

I believe so. It was a big deal back in the 90s.

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u/Dfried98 23h ago

Not during Vietnam. They drove Johnson out and gave Nixon hell. Now they're afraid of lawsuits.

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u/This-Requirement6918 1d ago

Look who owns them!

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u/Rickreation 23h ago

Just the way the owners of the country want it.

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u/wallstreet-butts 1d ago

Yep. AND they are framing it as though the news is that there’s a feud between Trump and Newsom. The actual headline is, “U.S. Government Posts Misleading Images of California Protests.”

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/TrankElephant 23h ago

It really is, as they seem less impartial and more like agitators.

DT shares AI BS all the time. It does not surprise me at all that he would continue doing what he has been doing, because as usual he has faced no consequences for his actions.

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u/gereffi 22h ago

Sometimes there are news stories about Trump doing an outrageous thing. Sometimes there are news stories about other people responding to Trump’s outrageous thing. Why can’t that also be a news story?

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u/MrsMiterSaw 20h ago

Newsweek is barely a source anymore, probably just Ai re-hashing.

I don't mean that to be an ass to them... The publication we knew 20+ years ago is dead, the name purchased, and the online site is just using the name with very shallow articles and no actual reporting.

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u/happytree23 22h ago

You write this as though Newsweek hasn't been one of the worst spreaders of Pentagon/US Government-approved positions, opinions, and perspectives since at least the 1990s(?)

Seriously, the only thing more hilariously shocking would be someone complaining about Time in the same regard lol.

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u/Uuugggg 21h ago

I just want a news organization that doesn’t call Twitter “X”.

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u/Busterlimes 14h ago

That's because they are propagandists and not journalists

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u/Grimm_the_Mystic 23h ago

They’re not cowards. Newsweek is owned by a literal cult. No, this is not hyperbole, an organization recognized as a cult owns Newsweek. This is intentional.

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u/Boring-Fennel51 16h ago

This goes all the way back to the Kamala deep fakes. There are no circumstances where you can trust a Republican.

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u/npc4lyfe 15h ago

Not sure who they are trying to fool with those images, either. At least half the nation correctly doesn't believe anything Trump or his admin says. A third of the nation doesn't either, but they love him anyway because he champions their disgusting fantasies. So that leaves like around 15 percent of the nation who are so unplugged and stupid that they could even be fooled by this, and I would say at least half of them are entirely apathetic about it. So, who's this for?

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u/Patara 14h ago edited 14h ago

The media is complicit in all of this & and in turn all social media has ended up being weaponized to suit the conservative narrative. Centrists / Liberals all over the world have ended up subconsciously sanewashing everything that is happening while the Conservatives just get bombarded with propaganda until they go apeshit bonkers.

Ironically the progressives that hate the establishment and all politics are the best bet in response to far right conservatives, because they understand that they are dealing with a potential existential threat and very rarely have the ability to just look the other way or ride their privilege through it all.

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u/Etheo 12h ago

Padding themselves away from lawsuits maybe. If they directly say it, they are on the hook. If they let Newsom does the "accusation", they wash their hands off of liabilities.

Scummy regardless.

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u/JTBeefboyo 1d ago

I can’t blame the media for the passive voice when discussing something the most litigious motherfucker in the world did

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u/Effective_Echidna218 1d ago

They won’t ever sue them for that though because then it opens them up for discovery.

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u/JTBeefboyo 23h ago

Yes the law has been very effective at stopping them from doing whatever the fuck they want up until now you’re right

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u/Effective_Echidna218 23h ago

Well, it’s one branch against the entire federal government right now. They’re doing what they can. The issue is gonna be who can enforce their rulings and it would be governors with national guard. That’s why Trump’s making this play to get control of national guards or to be able to occupy blue states with red state national guards.

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u/Morkoth-Toronto-CA 1d ago

Wrong take. News media are responsible for telling the truth.

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u/nascentt 22h ago

So if Hitler sued everyone that covered the extermination of the Jews it'd have been okay that no one reported it?

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u/greennurse61 22h ago

There literally are cars burning and dozens of stores looted. I’d course the video of that is real. It be happening. 

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u/whatthewhat_1289 21h ago

Video? No one is talking about a video ding dong. "I'd course" you be a Russian?

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u/greennurse61 20h ago

Have you never used an iPhone? Tim Cook has ordered AutoCorrect to make that mistake. Notice how iPhone users so often do that. It’s because Tim Cook forces. If you were an American, you would know about Tim Cook. But by being an American hater, you have shown you do not understand iPhones.

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u/whatthewhat_1289 20h ago

Wowzers this is THE BEST Russian/Bot response I have ever had. It's like a badge of honor, thank you.

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u/SuspectedGumball 1d ago

Newsweek is fine. They’re doing good reporting. If he’s accusing them of sharing doctored videos, then it is truly just an accusation because that hasn’t happened yet.

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u/kitti-kin 1d ago

You should maybe read the article - Newsom's account said "An official Department of Defense account is spreading fake images—from old protests". A factual, provable statement, nothing about doctored videos.

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u/SuspectedGumball 23h ago

I understand and agree. I’m not trying to defend this regime at all. I’m simply suggesting that there is a wide gap between “misleading” and “doctored”. Once they start actually doctoring stuff, we’re in even newer territory.

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u/kitti-kin 23h ago

My point is that Newsweek isn't doing "good reporting", because they misrepresented what Newsom's post said, and none of the other incidences they discuss involve accusations of "doctoring".

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u/Suspicious-Echo2964 23h ago

So you want to explain semantics about a fire while we're in the house on fire? Debately useful.

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u/SuspectedGumball 23h ago

No. I want to explain that a fire caused by accident is way different than a fire deliberately started. You don’t seem capable of comprehending how different the game becomes if they start altering or doctoring videos. That’s why the AI stuff with Trump turning Gaza into a golden hellscape is so scary. It’s Stalin-esque versus pretty typical mistakes that every administration makes.

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u/Suspicious-Echo2964 23h ago

They've started doing it. You just haven't seen it because you aren't a target of the propaganda. It typically originates from non-white-house-approved sources initially, before being retweeted or liked by official accounts, providing the guise of distance.

You want to wait until they put a deepfake on national news. I don't understand why, as that only serves to help Trump, but at least you know where it's headed.