French television channel manipulating footage of protests

The French television channel France 3 has admitted that it has manipulated images of the demonstrations of the yellow vests. In a news broadcast a sign was shown with the text ‘Macron’, while other footage of the protests show a sign with the text ‘Macron Degage’. This can be interpreted as ‘Macron leave’.

Why the news channel, which is part of the public broadcaster, manipulated the images is not clear. In a later broadcast the channel offered her apologies for the incident. The presenter said it was a human error and that it will not happen again.

Trust in the media is falling

The timing of this incident is quite unfortunate, because the anger of the French population is also directed against the media. During the yellow vest protests of recent weeks, a building of a media corporation was also attacked. Some demonstrators accuse the media of unilateral and incomplete reports about the yellow vests.

A week ago, the security services in France started an investigation into possible influencing of public opinion via social media. In particular, attention was paid to the possible influence of Russian media and fake troll accounts. According to the Russian news site Sputnik, this investigation has not achieved any result yet. We are looking for other sources to confirm this.