TV channel France3 has “fixed” a placard held by a Yellow Vest protester, which urged President Emmanuel Macron to resign. The broadcaster explained that the sign was broadcast reading just Macron, due to a “human error.”
The unfortunate blunder occurred on Saturday during an evening news program that was covering the ongoing Yellow Vest protests.
Among videos and images of the protests, France3 featured a photo supplied by Agence France Presse (AFP). It shows a couple of mounted police officers watching the crowds outside the Opera building in Paris on Saturday. One of the Yellow Vests holds high a placard, reading “Macron out.” Here’s this photo.
Everything was the same in the France3 broadcast, except for a ‘tiny’ detail – the “out” part of the slogan had mysteriously vanished from the image.
The photo-doctoring did not escape sharp-eyed watchers, who promptly accused the broadcaster of “censorship.” The replay of the program is publicly available online, and France3 acknowledged the blunder, blaming it on a “mistake.”
“There was no intent to hide the sign last night. It’s a human mistake,” the broadcaster tweeted, supplying the unmodified image. “We have identified the source. It will not happen again.”
It remains unclear how, exactly, one can doctor a picture in such fashion by “mistake.” Aside from the uproar and accusations of Orwellian-grade censorship, the blunder triggered a wave of jokes.
Some users “fixed” the picture for France3, doctoring it harder. Here’s an example – the placard now reads “Long Live Macron!”
Others suggested who might have been responsible for such an unfortunate “mistake.” Some jokingly suggested that Alexandre Benalla, the embattled former security aide to Macron, might have had his hand in it.
Benalla has been involved in several high-profile scandals. Namely, he was caught on tape getting up-close and personal with protesters earlier this year. Macron’s aide was “helping” police to beat them … while sporting borrowed police gear himself.
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