Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
Ron DeSantis Idaho Governor Issues Ban on Mandatory ‘Vaccine Passports’ Universally panned ’60 Minutes’ hit piece on DeSantis just made him front runner until 2024. (R) that “60 Minutes” used in his Sunday piece on the Florida vaccine rollout could be considered deceptively edited, PolitiFact wrote Wednesday.
“The ’60 Minutes’ segment left out some of the background on why Florida partnered with Publix to distribute coronavirus vaccines,” said PolitiFact. Daniel Funke wrote in an inquiry into the controversy. “That omission could amount to ‘misleading editing,’ as some social media users claim.”
“60 Minutes” did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Hill on the PolitiFact article.
The story, reported by CBS’s Sharyn Alfonsi, was an extensive criticism of how coronavirus vaccines were distributed in Florida and highlighted how difficult it was for some people in at least one low-income area to get the vaccine.
But the most talked about part of the segment was the claim that campaign donations from the Publix supermarket chain influenced DeSantis’ decision to distribute vaccines through the company’s pharmacies.
It was this particular claim, and the video clip “60 Minutes” used by Alfonsi that confronted DeSantis about his ties to Publix, that forced the show to defend the play
DeSantis and others, including Democratic Mayor of Palm Beach County, Dave Kerner, said the cronyism allegations are a political defamation and that “60 Minutes” deliberately spawned DeSantis’ detailed explanation of the decisions behind where and when vaccines were distributed.
A spokesperson for “60 Minutes” said video editing is a normal practice of the show for clarity and that the clip accurately reflects DeSantis’ response to Alfonsi’s specific question.
However, in its detailed breakdown of the story, PolitiFact said that “60 Minutes” omitted a significant portion of the DeSantis-Alfonsi interaction.
“DeSantis’ full response to Alfonsi’s questions took about three minutes,” PolitiFact wrote. While ’60 Minutes’ focused on his emphatic denial, it omitted the background he provided on how the state partnered with other pharmacies in December to distribute coronavirus vaccines in long-term care facilities and its own interactions with Publix customers. . “
By omitting that explanation, the “60 Minutes” story could qualify as “deceptive editing” according to a definition used by The Washington Post, PolitiFact said; “Edit large parts of a video and present them as a complete story” to distort reality.
PolitiFact ended the fact-checking by quoting Al Tompkins, a media commentator and senior faculty member at the Poynter Institute, which owns PolitiFact.
“In the story, there was a direct line between the campaign contribution and the reward,” said Tompkins. ‘And they have never proved that. I think they owe it to everyone – they owe it to the governor, they owe it to Publix, they owe it to the public – to explain to us how they came to that conclusion. “
“While it made for interesting television, it didn’t provide the full truth,” he added.