When I was in my teens, I used to do projects with my mom’s video camera all the time for school. One was for a marketing class where I did a fake commercial about a vanishing cream that really made things vanish.
Now, I did a little bit of camera trickery and quick editing that made it look like the house had disappeared. That being said, you can make anything look like anything if you want.
Think of it this way, David Copperfield didn’t exactly make the Statue of Liberty disappear did he?
Well, it looks like CNN may have been caught red-handed in one of their biggest hoaxes yet.
The network is vehemently denying that they staged a fake border crossing during one of their segments.
The footage in question shows purported migrants crossing the Rio Grande, which many, including immigrant rights advocates, are claiming looks like a staged event.
Check it out:
Doric was responding to claims that they recorded footage of a staged event and presented it to their viewers as a real border crossing. The video shows a masked figure leading migrants across the Rio Grande in a boat near the city of Hidalgo, Texas.
“The Rio Grande Valley has been ground zero for the latest surge in migration and here you see the operation unfolding right in front of us,” said reporter Ed Lavandera in the CNN report. “After the first raft crosses, the magnitude of this moment reveals itself. Dozens of migrants emerge and walk down to the river’s edge. You can see that this is a serious operation.”
Immigrants rights advocates and others found many reasons to be skeptical about whether the CNN crew had stumbled upon a migrant smuggling boat. The American Prospect, a progressive news outlet, documented the objections:
In the CNN footage, the smuggler leading the boat wears fatigues and a black ski mask. Smugglers typically attempt to blend in with the migrants, to avoid more severe punishment should they be caught. Smugglers also don’t normally provide face masks and life vests, nor ferry six boatloads of people across in broad daylight. Migrants also don’t typically line up single file along the shore to cross.