CBS denies faking scene of crowded Michigan testing clinic alleged in Project Veritas sting
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/may/6/cbs-denies-faking-scene-crowded-michigan-testing-c/
CBS News has denied faking a scene of novel coronavirus testing in Michigan by padding the drive-thru line with clinic workers to make the health center look busier than it was, as alleged in a Project Veritas expose released Wednesday.
Employees of Cherry Health in Grand Rapids said they lined up in their vehicles outside the COVID-19 testing tent for a May 1 segment on “CBS Morning News,” according to an interview with an unidentified “clinic insider” and hidden-camera discussions with staffers.
In a statement to the Washington Times, CBS News denied that the crew staged such a scene, which would be a clear breach of journalistic ethics.
“CBS News did not stage anything at the Cherry Health facility. Any suggestion to the contrary is 100% false,” said the statement, which was also posted on the Project Veritas website. “These allegations are alarming.”
The network said that nobody involved with the story featuring on-camera reporter Adriana Diaz was aware that anyone in the line was a clinic employee, but discovered after contacting Cherry Health that at least one staffer was involved in padding the line.
“We reached out to Cherry Health to address them immediately,” the CBS statement read. “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.”
The network added: “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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CBS returns to their Dan Rather model - #Fake but “Accurate”