Hoax: Kantor clip slamming Indiana was a video editor’s creation

Yesterday we wrote about the dust kicked up among the Washington press corps by a video bite from YouTube in which Hillary Clinton adviser Mickey Kantor appeared to slam the people of Indiana — whose Democratic primary, of course, is just days away. But the video clip in question was exposed a few hours later as a hoax. Media Matters demonstrated as much last night when it posted the unaltered source clip from the 1993 documentary The War Room.

The doctored clip originally carried subtitles claiming Kantor used an inaudible racial slur, and the footage was re-cut to suggest that Kantor said of Indianans, “Those people are shit.” In fact, he said, “Those people are gonna shit,” and it was a reference to the Bush I White House’s reaction to the results from Indiana, the home state of then-veep Dan Quayle.

So how did the clip become a cause celebre, noted widely and blogged about here? Yesterday morning the doctored clip was sent to a number of reporters and mainstream news organizations, and achieved big play in a very short time. We picked up on the controversy and posted a note about it (text of our original item below the jump) shortly after lunch via an RSS feed from the Washington Post, but Jake Tapper of ABC and others gave it play as well. In this case, technology and a superheated news cycle gave the clip a considerable amount of exposure before anyone paused to examine the source.

The episode is the first full-blown hoax we can recall that’s gone viral in this campaign, but chances are it won’t be the last. It’s a reminder to journos and bloggers alike that we can’t count on the organizations at the top of the food chain to do our vetting for us.

Here’s the unaltered War Room footage via Media Matters.

  Buzz clip of the day: Controversy erupts over what Clinton adviser Mickey Kantor said about Indiana

UPDATED: See below.

There’s a real-time YouTube dustup happening today that involves the Clinton campaign and the upcoming Indiana primary. This morning, a user identified only as Indy007q posted a video excerpt from the 1993 campaign documentary The War Room in which Hillary Clinton adviser Mickey Kantor, who chaired Bill’s ’92 campaign, can be heard to say of the results from Indiana, “Those people are shit.”

It’s the talk of the DC press gang this morning, privately at least, but as Jonathan Weisman of the WashPost’s The Trail blog notes, the controversy doesn’t end there. The video you see below is missing a set of subtitles that were originally posted with the clip this morning. That version is now listed as private at YouTube, but the description is still available, and it quotes Kantor as follows:

  “Look at Indiana…it doesn’t matter if we win. Those people are shit. How would you like to be a worthless white ni**er?”

The subtitles were removed after complaints. I certainly don’t hear the racial epithet.

Update: Jonathan Weisman now has more on the Kantor clip: Kantor concedes making the “those people are shit” statement that can be heard, but vehemently denies using racist language, and is threatening whoever posted the clip with a libel lawsuit. Both Kantor and War Room director D.A. Pennebaker say they believe the clip has been manipulated.

War Room excerpt: Mickey Kantor on the residents of Indiana (:34)