DeSantis rips ’60 Minutes’ over deceptively edited clip: 'Ambulance chasers with a microphone'
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis rips ‘partisan’ corporate media over ‘selectively edited’ ’60 Minutes’ segment.
The 2024 presidential election race is off and running. You can tell that because leftist "60 Minutes" made up a huge lie about one of the top Republican front-runners.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was the latest victim of hit-job "journalism." The once-reputable news magazine show devoted three months to an investigation trying to take down one of the most successful COVID-era governors.
Sunday’s show pulled out all the stops attacking DeSantis. It declared Florida’s vaccine distribution was "sparking outrage." That’s always code for Democrats/journalists who are upset that it was all going well.
The ridiculously phony story claimed, "Hollywood moguls, New York socialites and tourists from overseas" were jumping others in line. Then, in one of the most outlandish lines seen in a "news" program, "60 Minutes" said, "It sounds like ‘The Hunger Games.’"
Ordinarily, insane comparisons like that come from one of the activists who reporters interview to make their point. They still get emphasized, but this one instead came from correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi.
For those who have missed the popular movies and books, "The Hunger Games" are about gladiatorial combat among kids. Twenty-four of them try to slaughter one another and only one is supposed to survive.
So, yeah, just a bit different than Florida’s vaccine policies.
No matter, Alfonsi was just getting warmed up. The story showed her going after the governor at a press conference and talking about her accusation of "pay for play." She accused the governor of working with Publix because of campaign contributions.
"Campaign finance reports obtained by ‘60 Minutes’ show that weeks before the governor's announcement, Publix donated $100,000 to his political action committee," she explained. The program had Alfonsi playing gotcha with DeSantis acting like she got the better of the exchange.
Nothing could be further from the truth – except of course for the "60 Minutes" story. CBS simply cut all of the press conference where DeSantis proved them wrong. The governor went on to explain how Florida didn’t even start working with Publix initially. But when it came time to expand the state’s program, Publix was the company that stepped up first.
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Since the CBS report relied on publicly available video that it censored from the story, the bias didn’t stay hidden for long. Conservatives and Republicans were predictably furious.
People on the right mad at the biased news media. Imagine.
The post-Trump news cycle isn’t as hyper as the past four years, so this journalistic disaster has staying power. The result has been horrible for CBS. Democratic Palm Beach County Mayor Dave Kerner didn’t just slam "60 Minutes." He said its reporting was "intentionally false." He added, "‘60 Minutes' should be ashamed."
So far, "60 Minutes" is hoping the controversy blows over. And most traditional journalists gave up on quaint concepts like shame long ago. A network spokesman told DailyMail.com that the video was edited, "as we always do for clarity." The Daily Mail didn’t give the name of the spokesman, but I think it was some guy named Pinocchio.
Another CBS spokesman released a statement Tuesday defending the network’s story. "We requested an interview with Gov. Ron DeSantis, he declined," read part of the statement. As if any sane person would agree to be part of a hit job like this. Almost humorously, CBS admitted, "Our story Sunday night speaks for itself." Yes, it does. But what it says about both "60 Minutes" and journalism isn’t good.
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For his part, DeSantis is gaining the benefit of being a media target. Conservatives adored President Donald Trump every time he rumbled with the press. He was their gladiator. If CBS and the rest of the news media put DeSantis in that role, voters will unify behind him faster than my skin would burn under the Florida sun.
DeSantis was on "Fox & Friends" Tuesday making the key point, that "a lot of Americans don't believe corporate media anymore for precisely this reason." The reason he’s alluding to is that most major news organizations are left-wing activists, not neutral purveyors of news.
If they did news, CBS would have mentioned Florida is covered by Publix stores and, as DeSantis said, "It would be malpractice not to use them as a distribution point."
Bashing the news media is a mix of baseball, football and basketball for conservatives. It’s a popular sport and it’s never out of season. This "60 Minutes" story is why. To quote the governor, "they lie and lie and lie and lie."
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The press spent all of 2020 promoting New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo as the voice of COVID-19 competence while bashing DeSantis. Turns out, Cuomo was killing 15,000 people by sending infected patients into nursing homes and DeSantis was running his state competently without crushing its economy.
Journalists got it 100% backwards. I wonder why.
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