A campaign ad for President Trump
Donald John Trump More than a dozen people injured in shootings near Chicago funeral home Players of the Cleveland Indians meet with team leaders to discuss the possible name change Pelosi calls the coronavirus the ‘Trump virus’ MOREThe re-election has been criticized as misleading this week for including a photo of protesters taken in Ukraine in 2014.
The Facebook ad in question contrasts a photo of the president and other officials with one of the protesters who appears to be attacking a police officer on the ground. The images are accompanied by the text: “Public security vs. chaos and violence”.
Posts that include the images were first published on Tuesday and are now inactive, according to the Facebook ad library. The ad, labeled “Evangelicals for Trump,” was published in three posts. with different text, and all three obtained less than 1,000 impressions.
Hahaha
A new Trump notice on chaos and violence shows a policeman attacked by protesters …
… is only a photo of Kiev in 2014, when the Yanukovych thugs fought to quell a democratic uprising. https://t.co/VfJujT50Lm pic.twitter.com/QBrlwauo6s
– Jesse Lehrich (@JesseLehrich) July 22, 2020
Photojournalist Mstyslav Chernov confirmed to Business Insider that the photo included in the ad was taken in Kiev in 2014. The image, which is available on Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia’s public domain media file, is licensed under Creative Commons 3.0, meaning anyone can use it if they credit the photographer. The ad did not credit the photographer.
“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,” Chernov told Business Insider. “The only way to combat this is through education and media literacy. When people learn to independently distinguish the truth from the lies, then the number of manipulations will decrease.”
The photo was taken two days before Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region.
The Trump campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.
The Facebook announcement comes as Trump seeks to position himself as the “law and order” candidate amid ongoing protests across the country.
The president has sent federal police to Portland, Oregon, as the city watches protests against police brutality sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. Federal officials, contrary to the wishes of local leaders, have used tear gas and non-lethal ammunition against protesters in the city.
Trump on Monday threatened to send the federal police also to other cities, such as New York and Chicago, to quell the protests.
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