Donald Trump’s reelection campaign released a new ad targeting evangelical voters in the country. The ad shows two photos: One photo shows Trump with different officers with a caption that read, “Public Safety.” The other photo shows a police officer being attacked by a protestor with a caption that read, “Chaos and Violence.”
The top of the ad read: “Evangelicals for Trump are ready to help re-elect President Donald J. Trump. Join the movement today and ensure religious freedoms are kept as a top priority!”
Business Insiders reports: “However, the image the Trump campaign used is not from the US – or from this year. It was uploaded on Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia’s public-domain media archive, in 2014 with the label ‘a police officer attacked by protesters during clashes in Ukraine, Kyiv. Events of February 18, 2014.'”
The photographer, Mstyslav Chernov, confirmed to Business Insider that this was his photo from Ukraine in 2014.
“Photography has always been used to manipulate public opinion. And with the rise of social media and the rise of populism, this is happening even more,” he said.
“The only way to combat this is through education and media literacy. When people learn to independently distinguish truth from lies, then the number of manipulations will decrease.”
LOL
a new Trump ad warning of chaos & violence depicts a cop being attacked by protesters…
…only it's a pic from Kyiv in 2014, when Yanukovich's thugs fought to quash a democratic uprising.https://t.co/VfJujT50Lm pic.twitter.com/QBrlwauo6s
— Jesse Lehrich (@JesseLehrich) July 22, 2020
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