How a PP (People's Party) ball spreads (part 1)

Thursday morning, the Popular Party leaked a video to the X network of Minister Margarita Robles rebuffing the United States ambassador. The sound was very poor, but the tweet claimed that the Minister of Defense was saying “No, no, I’m with Trump...”. They added the transcription of the phrase over the image to reinforce the statement and show that Robles contradicted Sánchez’s “No to war.” Shortly after, Moncloa warned that it was a manipulation of the narrative. It provided the fragment of the video with more context to confirm that Robles was talking about the heating of the room and that she was actually saying “No, no, I’m comfortable”.The case is interesting to see the journey of a lie and understand how fake news spreads. The PP's tweet with Robles's video was posted online at 10:52 AM. Curiously, eight minutes earlier, at 10:44 AM, Ana Rosa Quintana warned that the PP had disseminated this video and announced it with the caption “Controversy. Latest news” on screen. A reporter from the program explained that, while the PP claimed Robles was saying “I’m with Trump”, the minister's team claimed that she was actually saying “I’m freezing”. They then invited viewers to judge: “Judge for yourselves”. They provided the images, but with the subtitles of the PP's version, thus conditioning the audience: “No, no, I’m with Trump”, it said at the bottom of the screen. The following minutes of Quintana's talk show were dedicated to delving into this comment by the Minister of Defense. The PP's lie was already beginning to spread.On Espejo público they were already pointing, from very early on, to Robles's contradictory spirit: “Margarita Robles had no problem eight months ago with the use of bases after the United States attack on Iran”. At 11:10 AM, eighteen minutes after the PP's tweet, a reporter raised the alarm about the video. They did not cite the PP, but rather presented it as their own discovery. They explained that they had analyzed the images of the meeting between the minister and the United States ambassador and had detected a comment. They broadcast the video with the translation: “No, no, I’m with Trump”. After showing it, the reporter insisted with bravado that we should watch it again: “Let’s listen to it again so that everyone is clear”. And they repeated the images with the subtitles according to the PP's version, without explaining that Robles's team had denied it. Susanna Griso received that discovery with great enthusiasm: “Excellent what you just showed us, Javier!”, and the entire panel of commentators reacted with shock to the socialist government's supposed contradiction. The PP's lie went from being a falsehood to being considered “a journalistic controversy” in a few minutes, intended to foster confusion among the audience. The political manipulation had worked. But the charade was just beginning...