Again: Russian TV shows Arma 3 clip as actual footage of Syrian war

[midian182]

Not for the first time, Russia has used footage taken from a video game and used it in a report on real-life military action. In this instance, a clip from Arma 3 briefly appeared in a segment on the war in Syria.

State-run Channel One TV’s weekly Voskresnoye Vremya program was airing a segment celebrating Russia’s armed forces, to commemorate last week’s Defender of the Fatherland Day.

Roman Filippov, a Su-25 ground attack aircraft pilot killed in Syria earlier this month, was one of those honored. In a sequence showing Su-25 jets in action, one scene contained what appears to be a truck being attacked from the perspective of a sniper. It’s on the screen for less than a second, but a closer look reveals the clip is from the 2015 military simulator game, Arma 3. Check it out below.

After viewers spotted the game’s inclusion and highlighted it on Pikabu, Russia’s version of Reddit, Channel One said that "the use of this frame was a mistake by the video editing director.” They allegedly took it from the video archive, where it came from a previous story on computer games.

But not everybody is convinced that the clip’s inclusion was accidental, especially as this isn’t the first time video games have been used this way. Back in November, Russia’s Ministry of Defense posted images of what it claimed was “irrefutable evidence” of cooperation between US troops and ISIS, but in reality, it was a screenshot from a trailer for a mobile game. And in May 2016, the Russian embassy in the UK posted a screenshot from classic PC strategy game Command and Conquer: Generals to warn of extremist activities.

It’s not just Russia that uses games in this way. In January 2017, CNN used Fallout 4 to illustrate Russian hacking activities, while in 2011, a report by British TV station ITV showed footage of a helicopter being shot down using weapons allegedly supplied by the IRA, but the clip was taken straight from Arma 2.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/73484-russian-tv-shows-arma-3-clip-actual-footage.html

 

[TomSEA]

LOL...that's hilarious!

For us regular gamers, the clip is obviously a game. But you have to give props to developers for creating photo-realistic content that fools a whole lot of other people including media "experts."

 

[dirtyferret]

I use clips of Mario brothers to show plumbers what work needs to be done in my home. We have been Koopa free for over ten years!

 

[Cycloid Torus]

Real Fake News ... caught in the act.....um, red-handed.

 

[IAMTHESTIG]

I feel like I've been Robbed... Ugh.

See what I did there?

 

[Uncle Al]

This is a side-spliter ..... nearly as much fun as the first Russian parade with nuclear missiles. There were only a hand full of trucks, but they kept circling the block and the Western press reported the Russians had thousands and thousands ......

 

[QuantumPhysics]

I downloaded ARMA III. Think I played it for like 20 minutes. The driving session bored me.
Any game like this would be wise to streamline its controls down to either Battlefield 4 style or Call of Duty style.

 

[senketsu]

I think the words 'hilarious' and 'props' are not the correct words, rather it should be 'sad' and 'propaganda' Sad that people now are so gullible (I admit it is tough in a state where the media is controlled more than ours) that a state run news service actually serves this up, and sad that people will believe it. Of Russia's 150 million citizens, yes of the one's that have seen it, many will recognize it for what it is, but many won't.

 

[JaredTheDragon]

It's even more hilarious that this kind of "fake news" is still more accurate than the mainstream media's Langley-based fiction.