NSW Police say forensic analysis finds no evidence the phrase "gas the Jews" was chanted in videos circulating online from a pro-Palestinian rally in October, despite people providing statements the phrase was used.
More honest than everything else reported this week on the issue.
Barrister Mahmud Hawila, who has previously represented the protest organisers, said police told them they had doubts about the video’s veracity within days of the protest.
Misleading reporting. The police statement this week specifically says it wasn’t doctored.
Fair enough, this may not be deliberately misleading. But the article does unfortunately leave out the police statement verifying the video (sans captions) is undoctored.
By not being specific, it gives the wrong impression that the video was doctored. Indeed that is what Antoinette Lattouf is implying this week.
Yeah, I agree, the language used by people could be more precise.
By not being specific, it gives the wrong impression that the video was doctored. Indeed that is what Antoinette Lattouf is implying this week.
Tweet text - to save people clicking though to the screen shot, or for screen-readers
BREAKING: it took 100+ days, but NSW police can now confirm there’s no evidence “gas the Jews” was chanted outside the Opera House.
@cameronwilson & I investigated the authenticity of the AJA edited & distributed video
I don’t think Lattouf is being hugely misleading there, the accuracy of the captioning could reasonably come under the term ‘authenticity’. But it might have been better if she used ‘accuracy’ there instead of ‘authenticity’, I guess. I think the point she is making, though, is that if there’s an established inaccuracy in the captioning, that reasonably casts doubt on the honesty of other aspects about the videos that Lattouf and Wilson had called into question in their original article: https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/12/13/viral-footage-gas-the-jews-police-factcheckers-unverified/
From that article:
Analysis of the AJA videos by verification experts at RMIT CrossCheck found a number of signs that suggest audio was edited. This review seen by Crikey notes that the audio is often out of sync with the video, that a section of audio was repeated during a clip, and that some audio was repeated while different clips were being shown. These suggest that additional editing was done beyond splicing different video clips together.
NSW Police told the media that the AJA’s video “had not been doctored” but instead was edited into a compilation.
I’m not sure to what degree ‘doctored’ and ‘edited into a compilation’ are ambiguous here. Watching the video, it seems to me they’ve done more than put a number of raw video clips with their own audio into a single video sequentially. It seems very unambiguous to me that there’s sections of the video where they’re playing one continuous audio track but they cut between multiple different video sources - or at one point it looks like they skip forward in the same video source (while the audio track seems to remain continuous). I think it could definitely be misleading in terms of how widespread the anti-semitic chants were among the crowd, and the crowd’s response to them. Both the Crikey articles I’ve linked above cite more than one expert who has done some real analysis, though, which is worth a lot more than my impression.
The expanded quote from the police, about ‘had not been doctored’, by the way, is:
“There is a compilation video, which has a number of audio and visual files, those audio and visual files have not been doctored, they are simply cuts from a more ‘parent file’.
“When examined, the parent file and the video compilation have the same audio and visual and from that the expert has been able to conclude they are the words that were used.”
That full quote doesn’t - on my reading anyway - explicitly contradict the idea that the compilation is something other than a simple sequential compilation of sections of video with their own synchronised audio. It doesn’t really seem to say that all audio was in sync with the video played, just that all audio and video was from the same file. In fact, the way it phrases it as “audio and visual files” instead of, say, ‘audiovisual files’ if anything seems to suggest that the audio and video have indeed been spliced separately.
Anyway, probably ended up going too deep on that one, but I got interested.
Indeed you can see/hear for yourself that the video did switch video scenes while maintaining audio continuity.
If they were different angles of the same incident then it is legitimate documentary style editing but I certainly would not have done it that way if I was AJA and after reading your comment I acknowledge that they deserve criticism for it.
I didn’t realize there was a follow-up Crikey article today. Thanks. And surprised that Lattof took on the criticism thrown her way on Twitter yesterday.
In fact I cancelled my Crikey subscription because of the article they wrote in December but am impressed with this new article and may resubscribe.
Misleading reporting. The police statement this week specifically says it wasn’t doctored.
Police Video statement
Police Text Statement
I think the ‘veracity’ in question was that of the captioning.
Fair enough, this may not be deliberately misleading. But the article does unfortunately leave out the police statement verifying the video (sans captions) is undoctored.
By not being specific, it gives the wrong impression that the video was doctored. Indeed that is what Antoinette Lattouf is implying this week.
Yeah, I agree, the language used by people could be more precise.
Tweet text - to save people clicking though to the screen shot, or for screen-readers
I don’t think Lattouf is being hugely misleading there, the accuracy of the captioning could reasonably come under the term ‘authenticity’. But it might have been better if she used ‘accuracy’ there instead of ‘authenticity’, I guess. I think the point she is making, though, is that if there’s an established inaccuracy in the captioning, that reasonably casts doubt on the honesty of other aspects about the videos that Lattouf and Wilson had called into question in their original article: https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/12/13/viral-footage-gas-the-jews-police-factcheckers-unverified/
From that article:
Wilson and Lattouf explore some of this in their article from after the police made their announcement: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/02/05/protest-video-gas-the-jews-investigation-sky-news-aja
That article includes:
I’m not sure to what degree ‘doctored’ and ‘edited into a compilation’ are ambiguous here. Watching the video, it seems to me they’ve done more than put a number of raw video clips with their own audio into a single video sequentially. It seems very unambiguous to me that there’s sections of the video where they’re playing one continuous audio track but they cut between multiple different video sources - or at one point it looks like they skip forward in the same video source (while the audio track seems to remain continuous). I think it could definitely be misleading in terms of how widespread the anti-semitic chants were among the crowd, and the crowd’s response to them. Both the Crikey articles I’ve linked above cite more than one expert who has done some real analysis, though, which is worth a lot more than my impression.
The expanded quote from the police, about ‘had not been doctored’, by the way, is:
(source: https://www.skynews.com.au/breaking-news/police-investigation-into-infamous-sydney-opera-house-palestine-protest-inconclusive/news-story/8f9fd959f7e65c54d38d6221d8c33e04
That full quote doesn’t - on my reading anyway - explicitly contradict the idea that the compilation is something other than a simple sequential compilation of sections of video with their own synchronised audio. It doesn’t really seem to say that all audio was in sync with the video played, just that all audio and video was from the same file. In fact, the way it phrases it as “audio and visual files” instead of, say, ‘audiovisual files’ if anything seems to suggest that the audio and video have indeed been spliced separately.
Anyway, probably ended up going too deep on that one, but I got interested.
Indeed you can see/hear for yourself that the video did switch video scenes while maintaining audio continuity.
If they were different angles of the same incident then it is legitimate documentary style editing but I certainly would not have done it that way if I was AJA and after reading your comment I acknowledge that they deserve criticism for it.
I didn’t realize there was a follow-up Crikey article today. Thanks. And surprised that Lattof took on the criticism thrown her way on Twitter yesterday.
In fact I cancelled my Crikey subscription because of the article they wrote in December but am impressed with this new article and may resubscribe.