CNN and sister channel Headline News have been caught faking a bizarre “satellite” interview between two reporters who were actually standing six car park spaces away from each other in the same Phoenix parking lot.

“The two suspects are Ashleigh Banfield of CNN and Nancy Grace of Headline News. At first it seems like a normal TV “remote,” as Banfield interviews Grace from another location. Then the channel’s graphics alert viewers: both anchors are in Phoenix. That’s odd. Also: They’re both outdoors, sitting in what looks to be a parking lot. And is that same building behind them?”

“It seems that Grace and Banfield are sitting in the same parking lot, facing in the same direction, and judging by the speed of the vehicles in their shots, they cannot be sitting more than 30 feet away from each other,” wrote the Atlantic Wire’s Dashiell Bennett and Philip Bump.

Then things truly get bizarre. Watch the cars moving in the background of both shots:

While this parking lot fiasco might be classified as a small lie, it demonstrates that deceit and manipulation are fundamental to mainstream media operations these days. You know you are dealing with compulsive liars when they lie even when there is nothing to be gained by it.

According to Amber Lyon, a three-time Emmy award winning journalist, CNN is routinely paid by the US government and foreign governments to selectively report on certain events. Furthermore, the Obama administration pay CNN for editorial control over some of their content: