‘Racist baby’ video shared by Donald Trump flagged as ‘manipulated media’ by Twitter

It is the latest in a series of tweets by the US President that have been flagged by Twitter in recent weeks.

A video shared on Twitter by US President Donald Trump has been flagged as ‘manipulated media’ by Twitter, after it was confirmed that the video had been edited and doctored to include a fake CNN logo and caption. The video shared by Trump, which sees a black and a white toddler running on a pavement, initially shows the black toddler running away from the white toddler with a caption beside a CNN logo on screen reading ‘Breaking News – Terrified toddler runs from racist baby’, suggesting it was originally broadcast on CNN. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1273770669214490626 The caption then changes to ‘Racist baby probably a Trump voter’ before ‘What Actually Happened’ appears on screen, with the video then showing the two toddlers running towards each other and embracing on the footpath. The white toddler then runs after the black toddler in the same footage shown at the beginning of the video shared by Trump, although the music strikes a markedly different tone this time around. At the end of the video, a message appears on screen reading ‘America is not the problem, fake news is. If you see something, say something. Only you can prevent fake news dumpster fires’. The video shared by Trump, which has garnered 11 million views at the time of writing, has been flagged as ‘manipulated media’ by Twitter. A link in the post redirects users to a picture of the two toddlers embracing and confirmation that it has been edited and features a fake CNN chyron (electronically generated caption). The link also confirms that the original story about the friendship between the two toddlers was reported by CNN in September 2019. As per Twitter rules, users may not deceptively promote synthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm. In addition, Twitter may label tweets containing synthetic and manipulated media to help people understand their authenticity and to provide additional context. In recent weeks, Twitter hid a post by Trump that violated Twitter rules about glorifying violence, while a number of his tweets were also accompanied with a fact-checking label. The action taken by Twitter came after Facebook removed ads for the Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign for the use of Nazi imagery. The ads included an upside-down triangle, which, it was pointed out, was quite similar to notorious Nazi symbols associated with political prisoners in World War II concentration camps. "We removed these posts and ads for violating our policy against organised hate,” a Facebook spokesperson told CNN. “Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group's symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol.”