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CBS News is denying claims that the network staged a lengthy car line at a Michigan coronavirus testing center for a recent on-air report.
Project Veritas, a right-wing watchdog group, released a report on Wednesday accusing the broadcast network of faking a drive-thru car line at the Cherry Health Medical Center in Grand Rapids, Mich., for a report that aired last Friday on "CBS This Morning."
In a video released by Project Veritas, numerous hospital staffers are heard mentioning that they had to find "fake patients" for the line by relying on medical personnel to drive up with their cars and that staff "pretended" to administer tests on the drivers.
CBS News flatly rejected the claims.
"CBS News did not stage anything at the Cherry Health facility. Any suggestion to the contrary is 100 percent false," the network said in a statement. "These allegations are alarming. We reached out to Cherry Health to address them immediately. They informed us for the first time that one of their chief officers told at least one staffer to get in the testing line along with real patients. No one from CBS News had any knowledge of this before tonight. They also said that their actions did not prevent any actual patients from being tested. We take the accuracy of our reporting very seriously and we are removing the Cherry Health portion from the piece."
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Tasha Blackmon, the CEO of the Cherry Health Medical Center, issued her own statement, saying she was "not aware of CBS staging anything."
"I did see the line of cars in the video that you shared with me. I can assure you that I did not instruct any staff to get in their cars and line up and I have no idea when it was filmed or who was in each car," Blackmon, who was interviewed by CBS News for the report, told Project Veritas.
Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe claimed an "insider" with knowledge of the incident told his group that "medical personnel were taken away from treating patients and making the line longer for actual patients wait[ing] for the COVID-19 test."
“You're telling me you're a hundred percent certain that CBS News, CBS News Corporation--national, staged a fake event. They faked the news. They faked the reality and broadcasted that to all of their audience last Friday on 'CBS This Morning,'" O'Keefe said to the insider, whose face was unseen and voice altered during an interview.
"A hundred percent. Absolutely," the insider responded.
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Many of the medical staff at the testing center were recorded with hidden cameras describing the alleged staging of the drive-thru.
"Apparently the news crew wanted more people in the line because they knew it was scheduled," a cleaning site supervisor said.
"We knew they were coming. We had no clue that we’re going to have to, like, do fake patients," a nurse is heard saying.