On March 10, one news video by Sky News raised a lot of questions. The news piece shows British MP Rishi Sunak leaving Downing Street 10 with a red folder. After Sunak passes a car, the color of the folder changes from red to green. Here’s the full video. Watch closely as the folder changes color at about 10s:

Nothing natural or e.g. a glitch in video camera, streaming etc. can explain the color switch of the folder. I suspected the video was digitally edited to emphasize the term “green budget” – although this was difficult to believe, because news companies basically shouldn’t alter news footage this much.

On March 11, Rhiannon Williams, a specialist producer (climate change) for Sky News answered to a question about this video. Williams admits the video was digitally edited – and of course the idea was the “green budget”.

I produced the piece – just a small colour switch to emphasise the need for a green budget. It's in the context of a climate/budget look ahead piece. The whole report is here, if you want to understand more: https://t.co/ROuQuFMhfn

— Rhiannon Williams (@_rhiannonw) March 11, 2020

Altering news footage to this extent is not a good idea although it seems the intention was not to deceive. There’s enough “MSM is fake news” claims out there and this kind of trick will not help.

Another related example from late March: CBS News used a brief clip from an Italian hospital in a segment about the coronavirus crisis in New York City. This turned out to be editing mistake.