Posted on by porlando

The Clip (What’s the Right Amount of Context?)

How much context is the right amount of context? When we necessarily choose a section — a clip — of a story on which to focus, how do we know we have chosen well?

How far out do we need to zoom? Further to that, what problems are caused by our choice of the clip?

There are differences in level of zoom. When Dan Carlin of Hardcore History first does a five hour podcast on Rome as a prelude to eventually get to talk about Cleopatra, that’s an uncommon wide angle view, though it still summaries years into hours. When we look at a short shareable video or an image as a way to sum up an event, that’s a view constrained by attention. There’s a time for each type of view, but media business models often prefer the quick, upsetting, and shareable.

Cardinal Richelieu

When it came to using a clip and interpreting intent, Cardinal Richelieu put it famously.

“If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.”

Whenever I read a quote that good I wonder if it was said at all. So I dug into it a bit — something I hadn’t done before, though I first heard that quote years ago. After all, that Richelieu quote is a clip itself. The quote, as it turns out, is first listed in The Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations, by Hoyt, Jehiel Keeler (p 762).

Those six lines mentioned, what are they? They are a snippet of one person’s thoughts that they chose to express. Edited and reinterpreted, they can mean something other than desired. A clip can represent many things and be different to an enemy than a friend.

Publication date of the source of Richelieu’s quote: 1896. That’s over 250 years after Richelieu died.

Owens – Lieu

I went from being a news junkie years ago to avoiding the news today. So I’m not that familiar with Candace Owens or Ted Lieu. I know their names but couldn’t tell you the details of what they stand for.

That’s why I was surprised when my Twitter feed was inundated one day in April with clips of their Congressional hearing exchange. Something had happened that, while maybe not newsworthy, was at least share-worthy. Again, it just seemed like it was too perfect of an exchange. After a few days, I dug in.

ted lieu nails gop for inviting hitler apologist candace owens to hearing on white supremacists pic.twitter.com/UPiGcSRPUQ

Candace Owens: “I think it’s pretty apparent that Mr. Lieu believes that black people are stupid and will not pursue the full clip…That was unbelievably dishonest…I’m deeply offended by the insinuation of revealing that clip without the question that was asked of me.” pic.twitter.com/UioMSZK93d

So which is it? Which clip do I accept? And how is it possible that there was a chosen clip on social media at all? Both of those clips are only a few minutes long combined. Why did they not appear together?

That was something that only made sense after I checked on the hearing.

This is the full video. It is four hours long. How many people will watch it in its entirety, rather than the clip that best represents what they want to be true?

Those clips are interspersed within the four hour hearing. How many people have time to select among those four hours? So you could say the lesson of Owens – Lieu is different from that of Richelieu. Richelieu takes any clip and makes it mean anything incriminating. Owens – Lieu takes a selected clip because without context it sounds like something incriminating.

Some People

Another, but much briefer, viral video was based on a part of a sentence said by another congressperson, Rep. Ilhan Omar. I’m not going to put these videos up since unlike the other clips they are mostly the sentence fragment plus other story turning images not necessarily related to what Omar said.  But it’s interesting to look at where the attention came from.

When Omar said “some people did something” in connection to the 9/11 attacks, she drew lots of negative attention, including the creation of that viral video. But what was the full sentence? What was the full speech?

“CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”

It was a mistake for a public figure to speak carelessly about a topic like 9/11, even in the year 2019. But the number of times Omar uses the words “some,” “someone,” “something,” is interesting. I came away from reading the transcript thinking that she’s just a poor public speaker. That might have put her at greater risk from someone making the clip. Here’s the full transcript.

The Smirk

Another incident spread online was “the smirk,” or the way a group of high school boys was shown to be antagonizing a Native American man. The name “the smirk” came from the look on one of the boy’s face (Nick Sandman) as he looked on.

The main actors in this clip exchange no words. Fascinating, I think.

This is an event I did see as it unfolded on social media. It was awful. The first clip showed what seemed to be despicable behavior. And it looked like everyone online agreed, including the boys’ school which publicly apologized for their behavior.

About two days later, the clip flipped. The cause of the flip? Enough people went beyond the clip and watched the entire video. I don’t think many people originally thought that there was an more complete video.

After viewing the longer video, Swisher would later apologize for what she said. Many others would apologize too.


But why the need to even have, and share, an opinion of the clip? Could we have taken the clip as first interpreted as true and also not worthy of attention or outrage?

In the past, it didn’t matter. There was as much history but there were fewer clips.

Aftermath: Nick Sandman and team are suing news outlets for $275M for the way they propagated a false story, including calls for him to be injured.

Causes of The Clip

In the early days of the web people thought that access to diverse, international, viewpoints would lead to less biased information. That was a too simplistic view. There are too many causes of the clip for this behavior to disappear.

The clip is here to stay. Here are some reasons.

Fitting a story to a situation. This is similar to Richelieu’s (supposed) quote on inventing a story to fit a need. When we fit a story to a situation, we have a likely story in mind and then see a clip that aligns with the story. Just the clip is enough to confirm our belief in the story.

Biases. If we see what looks like people behaving poorly (or well) and fitting into our expectations, we’re more likely to accept the clip and move on, like the Owens – Lieu examples.

Time. To truly dig into each story takes too much time to be worth it. How interested are we in finding something closer to the truth? Shouldn’t we trust in others with authority (or the overall market) to show us what is true? New distractions arise constantly. Why spend time digging into this one? That’s the case in each of the above clips.

Speed. The speed at which a story can evolve online requires effort to keep up to date. The speed at which a story can be shared and promoted lets one top story take over your awareness. By the time a clearer story emerges, we have already moved on to the next one.

Cameras and Distribution. As a photographer, I’ve long known that you can tell different stories of the same event depending on how you position your camera lens. Afterward, when all that physically remains are the pictures, the best known images get to tell the story. Again, that hits each of the above clips hard.

No responsibility. There is often little or no downside to weighing in publicly with incomplete information. Or, the potential for any downside, such as the Sandman lawsuit, is worth risking given the upside of status and supportive business models.

Business models. Media transitioned from subscription based to ad-based. That means that having spikes in traffic, as outrages with a story produce, increase media company revenues. That means that baked into the new media business model is the risk of future downside from spreading information before it is verified. It’s a spikier up and down business cycle, but one that seems unavoidable.

A thought. Perhaps the future of deep fakes will save us from the clip. When anything can be faked realistically, should we trust anything?