Manipulative Editing - Television Tropes & Idioms

Reality TV shows thrive on conflict between the contestants. Theoretically, the conflict is more gripping because it's real, with no scriptwriters, second takes, or most importantly, editors. Everything that happened really happened, just as it's shown.

Yeah, right. If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you cheap. Great view of Brooklyn.

In point of fact, there are reality TV writers, there can be "OK, can you say that again, only this time, with more emotion," and there are certainly editors. While the specific events may be outside of the producers' direct control—but that varies depending on the show, and don't count out less direct influence—each episode of reality TV often compresses days into forty-four minutes...and how the events are compressed can change a scene, a contestant's attitude, and alter "reality" to the point that it's barely recognizable as such to those who were there.

Common forms of Manipulative Editing include:

Cherry-picking from the Confession Cam. This one is almost too easy; only take the words wanted, without their context. Or, splice together sentences. A hint for catching this one: If the scene shifts mid-sentence, there's no guarantee that all the words came from the same Confession Cam.
For that matter, cherry-picking period. Imagine if your entire relationship with your best friend was to be summed up in ten minutes. Now imagine that the summation consisted of your combined worst ten minutes—your loudest arguments, your worst fights, your angriest moments ever. If someone who didn't know you or your friend saw only the summation, he might well conclude that you had once been friends, but were now mortal enemies.
Cherry-picking is also called a "Frankenbite" — different soundbites are stitched together to create a new whole.
Pointed questions. Along with the Confession Cam, there can occasionally be directed interviews, where the contestant is told to talk about X or Y. Here, the unseen interviewer may well provoke the contestant into giving better sound bites, and then cherry-pick only the worst bits.
Temporal shenanigans. Two events which took place days or weeks apart are shown to have happened simultaneously, or the other way around, making anger seem buried which was actually dealt with sooner, or adding additional context. If person A says something about person B just as B walks into the room, it's not impossible that person A actually said it several hours earlier and B didn't hear it.
Causal deletion. Sometimes, people do things for no reason. Sometimes, though, they have reasons...but if the reasons get left on the cutting-room floor, they look like they don't. This can make even the most justified anger seem petty and immature.
Prompting. Yes, we hate to burst your bubble, but sometimes, contestants will simply be told, "say this."
Worst side shooting. Reality TV can have a demanding schedule, and the days can be stressful to the point of exhausting. If it's a Reality TV Show Mansion show, then the contestants are also in near-total isolation, with no phones, no laptops, no music players...they have nothing to interact with besides each other. Twenty-four hours a day. For weeks on end. Try it sometime—you and your best friend will be at each other's throats inside two weeks, we guarantee. Couple that with the other factors above, especially the cherry-picking...

Like pretty much anything on television, Charlie Brooker has referenced it in his show, and showed how easy all of the above can be done. The You Tube nerds have put the footage here

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This troper was a contestant on a reality TV show; he knows whereof he speaks. Lest you think he's bitter, he doesn't regret the experience at all, even the Manipulative Editing. "Cameras are lenses," he says. "They can distort, blur, focus badly, or reflect, but they can't create." (Opticians, stay out of this. It's a metaphor.)
- To give a specific case, in one sequence he did something which appeared to be the result of profound arrogance, and several of the other contestants expressed opinions to the Confession Cam to that effect. When this aired, he was profoundly embarrassed; he simply didn't realize how what he did had looked—it was ignorance, not arrogance, but the cameras had played it up differently. Before the inevitable reunion show, he told the producers that all he wanted was a chance to apologize for seeming so arrogant—even if there was Manipulative Editing, there was a grain of truth there. He got his chance and the apology was (thankfully) accepted.
- Which reality show was this?
  - Beauty And The Geek. Guess which I was.
  - The Beauty?
- Bill and Joe, ("Team Guido" of the first season of The Amazing Race) have repeatedly said the same thing: The camera does not create footage. If it's on the film, it's because you said or did it. The editing, however, can add, delete, or change the context.
A 1999 episode of The Bill featured the police officer characters being filmed by a documentary crew, ala Cops. This practice was cleverly referenced in the plot itself: one of the production crew blackmails Detective Sergeant John Bolton by claiming she can manipulate the editing, and portray him in a negative light by making it look like he has lost a murder weapon during a raid on a flat. Ultimately this is turned the other way, as the weapon was eventually recovered, and the TV team then went back and filmed some close up shots of it in its original location so they could re-edit the footage of the original raid and make it look like the weapon was recovered in the first place.
Dr. House was a victim of benevolent editing when the documentary crew filming a patient he cured changed the context of his usual comments, turning them from the verbal abuse of a man who belittles his staff, the patient, and the crew itself into a heartwarming portrayal of a kind man who became a doctor "because of the movie Patch Adams".
Cuddy after watching the early copy, wiping away fake tears: It's difficult not to be moved.
House: Oh stop it. Suddenly I don't feel I can trust Michael Moore movies.
Cuddy: Where are you going? Kittens to get out of trees, blind kids to read to?
House: I owe it to the world to make sure this evil never sees the light of day.
Used in the Babylon 5 episode "The Illusion Of Truth". The editing makes it look as if Sheridan is hiding plans to replace humans with aliens. (they were hiding things from the news crew, but it was something completely different)
- Also used when Londo meets a technomage and tries to tape they conversation in a way that looks like they are alies.
The trope is referenced in Britain's Got The Pop Factor And Possibly A New Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar Strictly On Ice where the viewer is teased before the break with Geraldine giving an interview in a bad mood. In the actual interview, it turns out she was in a perfectly good mood and she was merely quoting that R Wayne was fed up with this trope.
The promos for Hells Kitchen make liberal use of cherrypicking to add drama to the show. In season 4, one episode saw Matt accidentally cut the tip off his thumb during the challenge, and food critics showing up for dinner service; the promos made it look like the events were one and the same, implying that the severed portion of Matt's thumb ended up on the critic's plate.
- And again in season 5, where the women's team slips while carrying a cow carcass into the kitchen and briefly panics when they see blood, learning to their relief that it just came from the meat. Guess which part wasn't shown in the promos?
On Colombian soap opera, the things that happen at the promos for the next episode at the end almost never happen they way they make it seem they will.
- The same goes for the promos for The Secret Life Of The American Teenager.
An in-universe example happens in the Leverage episode "The Juror #6 Job": Hardison splices together the question "Who finds in favor of the defendant?" with the jurors' reactions to the question "Who wants pizza for lunch?"
Used in this Jon Stewart Emmys bit. Stewart explains that he was asked to pretape his speech about Katrina so the censors could check it over. The speech has been obviously chopped up (and dubbed over, and fast-forwarded) and he ends up accusing officials of being "incompetent, unacceptable and shockingly inept".
Rowan And Martins Laugh In did a skit a few times that pretended to be this. They'd interview some celebrity — this troper recalls John Wayne — and then announce, "Now we'll show you what could be done by unscrupulous editing of this interview." The modified version had Wayne saying of critics, "They can kiss my Levis!"
Professional Wrestling does it all the time, specifically to exclude people that have left the company...whether they're working elsewhere, left on bad terms, or...well, you know (Chris Benoit). A recent WWE example was in the videos used to hype Triple H vs. Randy Orton for Wrestlemania 25. In the part that made reference to HHH and Stephanie McMahon being married, they used wedding footage with Stephanie and a guy with long blond hair (presumably HHH, only seen from the back). However, that man was actually Andrew "Test" Martin and the footage was from their "wedding" on Raw in late 2000 that HHH interrupted. Surreal when you consider that Test died not too long ago.
- When CNN interviewed John Cena for their "Death Grip" documentary, CNN edited it to make it appear that Cena admitted to taking steroids. WWE cried foul over this, and aired the unedited version of Cena's interview.
Weird Al's celebrity interviews.
The Green Beret and Spetsnaz representatives of Deadliest Warrior reveal in the comments section of The Aftermath - Green Beret vs. Spetsnaz that some level of Manipulative Editing is done to make both parties seem more confrontational to each other. For example, a finger gesture directed at the director for joking about the Spetsnaz was edited so that it looked like the Spetsnaz was flipping off the Green Beret as they were walking in.
- While we're on that, they also reveal that the weapons selections for that episode (and presumably other episodes) were picked by the producers based on coolness factor and were in many cases either a non-standard-issue weapon or were flat-out used incorrectly; for example, the Spetsnaz projectile knife is correctly used in conjunction with a throwing motion, much like how you'd throw a more conventional knife (though as demonstrated, it's still plenty deadly as was used on the show), and the show completely ignores the fact that Green Berets also have projectile knives (and even tomahawks, and I don't mean missiles) at their disposal, or how they also have semi-automatic (or even full-automatic) shotguns at their disposal as well, much like Spetsnaz forces.
Used on Twenty Four 24 in Season Two, where during President Palmer's impeachment proceeding it is made to look like the President ordered the torture of an innocent man by erasing the portion of a tape where he confessed to helping the terror plot.
Self-aware News Parodies admit to doing this from time to time. Because, well, it's funny and that's their job. Other times, you have to give the contributors credit... they really are just that good at getting people to look silly and say things they don't realize will make them look bad.
Jon Stewart: You think by now, they would know what we do. Why does anyone still agree to come on this show?!?!?
Another non-reality example: on Just Shoot Me, a couple of the characters splice up the bosses words to force another to do their bidding, with very obvious pauses and changes in inflection.
If you—value your—jobs... donut—mess up.
The Fast Show spin-off Swiss Toni had an episode where the titular character was invited to appear on a television show. His employees gave fairly positive responses when queried on whether he was a good boss; for example, one employee stated that he's usually good, but occasionally, 'he's a tosser'. Of course, the edited version simply said, 'he's a tosser'.
Parodied on Dead Ringers with a sketch based on the health show You Are What You Eat (the name is changed to You Are What We Edit). After the subject describes his perfectly healthy lifestyle to the presenter, she declares, "That's not nearly unhealthy enough to give our viewers a smug sense of superiority!" and edits it.
- Specifically, the line goes from:
''Well, I can't bear to lounge around on the sofa staring at the telly. I'm always careful what I eat. For instance, I avoid eating snacks, as I don't want to get fat, and I'm trying to exercise regularly to keep myself looking good."

"Well, I / lounge around on the sofa staring at the telly. I avoid / exercise / f/or / snacks. / I eat / fat, and / fat, and / fat. / Good.

Contestants auditioning for American Idol don't go directly to the celebrity judge panel; they first sing for staffers who try to sort people into "maybe good enough to be on the show," "not good enough to be on the show," and "so terrible it will be funny". Former contestants have alleged that the producers spliced together footage of their initial screening by the staffers so as it make it appear that they were singing in front of Randi, Simon, and Paula. This apparently happens frequently if a contestant sings badly for the show's staffers and is put through to the judges as a "joke contestant", but then pulls it together an gives a significantly better performance before the judges. The producers simply edit things to make it appear that the "so bad it's funny" attempt was done before the judges, and the contestant's merely-mediocre performance before the judges is never seen by viewers at home. This seems to explain instances where contestants appeared to give horrible performances that should have elicited scathing comments from Simon, but were dismissed with a much milder "sorry, it's just not good enough" comment.
- The show facilitates this by encouraging the contestants to wear the same outfit to every audition. At least until Season 9, where the wording was changed to be a bit softer, but it was still stressed verbally... Or So I Heard. If you want to catch some manipulative editing, look at what jewelry the contestant is wearing and how their hair is done when they talk to Seacrest outside, versus what they're wearing when they're singing. Because most kids will remember what dress/shirt they wore, but won't remember what jewelry they had on.
- There are also reports of the producers asking contestants to sing a different song that they aren't prepared for during the initial audition screening and recording the results, which invariably sounds terrible because the contestant hasn't practiced the song and/or doesn't even know all the words. The producers then edit this footage in with shots of the contestant walking in and out of the judging room so that they appear to have been badly botching the audition in front of the judges, when in fact during their actual appearance before the judges they sang a completely different song.
X Factor finalist Rhydian Roberts was a victim of manipulative editing during the audition shows, thanks to the editors' attempts to make him the show's Pantomime villain. The live shows proved he was really a nice polite boy from Wales... and Crazy Awesome. Following a few performances like this Crowning Moment Of Awesome he went from being the outsider to the bookies' favourite.
If Kurt Harland (of 80s synthpop group Information Society) is to be believed, the 2004 VH1 series Bands Reunited took this trope one step further. Besides plenty of manipulative editing, they manipulated actual events: they staged a scene where three out of the four band members reunited (even though the three of them had driven to the site together), and had the host wait outside for Harland, even though the producers and the other band members knew well ahead of time that he had decided not to do an interview.
Here's another troper who was on a reality show that I didn't even think needed interpersonal conflict. It was a one-shot episode, and part of it emphasized an argument between myself and a bandmate about a key change in a song - I was fine with it, he wasn't, but an unrelated scene with him complaining about the quality of a recording of that song was taken out of context to make it look worse.
Ever see the Survivor Recap show? They showed Sue's rat and snake speech and pointed out how well Richard Hatch played the game. What they didn't mention was that the deciding vote, Greg, asked Kelly and Richard to pick a number between one and ten. It was decided solely between that answer.
The several trailers for Survivor: Samoa made it seem like Russell was being targeted for elimination - seeing the episode showed no such talk of elimination.

Radio

Real Life

The BBC got into trouble when it broadcast a trailer which appeared to show the Queen storming out of a portrait sitting. Actually, she'd been walking in. This resulted in a high level resignation.
CBS recently got caught cutting and pasting bits of an interview with US Presidential candidate John McCain, so that the answer he appeared to give to one question was actually copied from another.
This troper knows of a project some Sociology students did. They wanted to show just how easy it is to manipulate some of those "random survey" videos - and how they do it in Reality TV shows to make people look like someone they aren't. They amassed some willing students, quite a bit of them being engineers, told them about the project and what they were trying to accomplish. They accepted, and actually contributed ideas. Now what did they try and manipulate it to? They tried to make the Engineer students (often considered smartest students on campus) look like complete imbeciles. They asked supposed "random basic knowledge" questions to the volunteers, and "Stuff that is on Freshmen Engineering exams" to them. Not only would they sometimes tell some of the non-engineer students what the answers were in advance, but they'd also ask stuff most people outside of specific majors wouldn't even know. (Eg, "Of what descent was Michael Dukakis?" "What's Cleistogamy?") Another thing they did was to show a supposed engineer having trouble with a simple project, while Art and Business majors completed it much more easily - they accomplished this by showing the Art and Business Major volunteers the puzzle ahead of time. Yet another example showed a non-engineering student completing a rubik's cube faster than the engineering student...And guess how they did this? Yep, you guessed it - the engineer was a fan of Myth Busters and gave them the idea to record him solving it, then giving it to another volunteer to rescramble while they played the footage backwards, making it seem like the non-engineer seemed to know exactly what he was doing.
- Once more, there's truth in television here - Some of those videos you see on sites like You Tube or comedy shows saying "Wow, look how stupid and uneducated Americans/Brits/Blondes/College Students/Canadians/Whatever are!" don't even bother to show you everything - It's Cherry picking at its best. One on You Tube even had the author admit they staged it for entertainment purposes.
In Mick Foley's second book "Foley is Good!", he talks about an incident where he was interviewed for a CBS news show to talk about the dangers of so-called backyard wrestling. He says that he was shown two separate tapes; one was relatively tame, while the other had all of the broken glass, barbed wire, and blood associated with unsanctioned wrestling. Given a chance to comment, he described the first as harmless fun as long as the kids were properly supervised, but when shown the second, he said that he actually grew nauseous and asked the tape to stop before it was completed. He condemned the second video as unsafe and unprofessional, saying that he would never recommend anybody go this route in pursuit of a professional wrestling career (ironic given his background, but at least he had a solid education in the basics). But when the special aired, the network showed the second, bloodier video, with Foley's comments from the first video shown in reply, making him look (in his words) like a heartless idiot.

Video Games

Web Original

Television Without Pity snarks on one particular Frankenbite in this recap.
There is a particular species of Fan Vid which basically involves editing together scenes from a movie/TV show/game/whatever in order to make it look like a gay love story. A related strain involves editing wholesome family movies to look like terrifying horror flicks, or vice versa.
- One would actually be very surprised at how much Mary Poppins looks like a movie where the nanny wants to terrify and kill the children with the right clips, or how The Shining looks like a simple family comedy. There's even a trailer in which it's implied that in Cinderella, the title character goes Ax Crazy after the stepsisters ruin her dress...
- There's a similar video which uses strategic censoring to make the count from Sesame Street say . . . something that wouldn't appear in a kid's show.

"Because I really love to ***!"

A popular gag in Youtube Poop videos is to edit a character's dialogue so they end up saying something weird, dirty, or both. For example, Robotnik's Face is Politically Incorrect changes Dr. Robotnik's line "I, Doctor Robotnik, am on the brink of my greatest success!" to "I'm on the brink of incest!"
- Robotnik's Youtube Poop catchphrase, "PINGAS!" (which sounds like "penis") is also an example: it comes from the phrase "Snooping as usual, I see!" It was discovered by Stegblob and first used in "Robotnik Has a Viagra Overdose".
  - There's also its much less popular equivalent, "PINESS", from Sonic's Christmas Blast. This one, in turn, comes from Robotnik's comment that "Hap-PINESS is always so much more enjoyable..."
- This is also part of the "THIS VIDEO WILL BE FLAGGED" fad, which involves editing a clip to make it sound like a character is doing or saying something dirty.
- Then there is the "I made this while doing X" meme, where a character's dialogue is used to form a song title followed by that song being played. The meme-maker was through_the_fire_and_flames.wmv.
Deconstructed rather brilliantly in this clip from Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe concentrating on editing.

Western Animation

In Drawn Together, the Jew Producer is known to edit the show to make it even more outrageous, a practice to which Foxxy and Toot object. At one point, the practice is parodied when Foxxy's Confession Cam segment is interrupted with rapid cuts after every single word to make it appear she says "My... taint... is... made... of... bacon!", just before she actually says that.
Mocked, like everything else in this archive, by The Simpsons (even better with the clock in the background that noticeably changes back and forth with each cut):
Homer: (actual dialogue) "Ehh, someone had to take the babysitter home. Then I noticed she was sitting on the gummi Venus, so I grabbed it off her. Oh, just thinking about that sweet, sweet candy...[moans lustfully] I just wish I had another one right now. But the most important thing is —"
Homer: (edited dialogue) "Ehh, someone had to take the babysitter home. Then I noticed she was sitting on / her / sweet can / ...so I grabbed / her / sweet can / [moans] / just thinking about / her / can / I just wish I had / her / sweet / sweet / s-s-sweet can..."
- The editing fun didn't stop there, however:
  Godfrey Jones: "So, Mr. Simpson: you admit you grabbed her can. What do you have to say in your defense? (shot of Homer during his interview, with obvious "paused VCR" artifacts) Mr. Simpson, your silence will only incriminate you further. (the shot of Homer zooms in to suggest his apparent advancement on Jones) No, Mr. Simpson, don't take your anger out on me. Get back! Get back! Mist — Mr. Simpson — nooo!"
  Voice Over: "Dramatization — may not have happened."
80-90% of the jokes in many episodes of Space Ghost Coast To Coast come from the clumsy, often surreal manipulation of interview footage.
In Scooby Doo 2 the mystery gang is being hounded by a reporter who pulls this on them. The trope is even lampshaded as its played
Fred: You're just trying to make it look like we think Coolsville sucks! *look of shock* Don't take that out of context!
The Fairly Oddparents:
(Vicky plays back tape)
Tape: (playing Timmy's voice) "Hi, I'm Timmy, and I—" (playing Francis's voice) "—cheated on my math test."
Timmy: "I never cheated on my math test!"
(Vicky plays another tape)
Tape: (playing Timmy's voice) "Hi, I'm Timmy, and I—cheated on my math test!"

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