The death of journalism III

Another in a continuing series

CBS’s 60 Minutes is a reliably progressive/liberal/Democratic apologist, but on Sunday it wildly outdid itself with its hit piece on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The “reporter,” Sharyn Alfonsi, accused DeSantis of a pay-for-play scheme by rewarding the Publix grocery store chain a deal to handle COVID-19 vaccinations because it gave $100,000 to his PAC. (See video below.)

I put quotes around reporter because Alfonsi is anything but. She’s a propagandist, a pawn of the Democratic party, someone who has no professional ethics or shame, allowing herself to be so abused by political interests.

At a press conference, she tried to portray DeSantis as an unapologetic opportunist who put campaign donations ahead of poor, black, senior citizens by turning over the state’s vaccination program to Publix.

The report unabashedly selectively edited out DeSantis’ explanation. It took a Democrat, Jared Moskowitz,, Director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, to call out 60 Minutes for its malpractice.

On Twitter, he called the report Twitter “absolute malarkey.”

In further explanation, DeSantis told conservative writer A.G. Hamilton:

“First of all, the first pharmacies that had [the vaccine] were CVS and Walgreens and they had a long-term care mission, so they were going to the long-term care facilities. They got the vaccine in the middle of December, they started going to the long-term care facilities the third week in December to do LTCs,” DeSantis told Alfonsi. “So that was their mission, that was very important and we trusted them to do that. As we got into January, we wanted to expand the distribution points.

Molly Hemmingway, writing in the Federalist accused 60 Minutes of trying to “invent a scandal:”

To push the false narrative and protect its favored governors, “60 Minutes” refused to interview people who disputed its false narrative, selectively edited video to hide facts, and omitted data that debunked its thesis and accurately describe Florida’s success.

Publix in a statement called the notion that it received special access “absolutely false and offensive.”

The irresponsible suggestion that there was a connection between campaign contributions made to Governor DeSantis and our willingness to join other pharmacies in support of the state’s vaccine distribution efforts is absolutely false and offensive. We are proud of our pharmacy associates for administering more than 1.5 million doses of vaccine to date and for joining other retailers in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia to do our part to help our communities emerge from the pandemic.

Compounding this outrage, other media picked up the CBS report wholesale without Maskowitz’ explanation or the critical backlash the report generated. (Here and here.)

Expect more of these groundless attacks on DeSantis. Democrats are getting an early start to a coordinated campaign against DeSantis who, because of his common sense and handling of the pandemic in Florida, is getting mentioned as a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2024.