Think back to mid-November 2016, and you’ll recall what we often cite as the high watermark in fake news; the moment the New York Times apologized for their failure to accurately and honestly cover the presidential election, and then in the same week to begin accusing the president of colluding with Russia to win the election — a claim that has now been widely, fully, and irrevocably refuted.
Well, the MSM has out faked themselves this time. CBS has taken footage of an Italian hospital during the Coronavirus pandemic and reported that it was footage from a hospital in New York.
The Italian hospital appeared to be completely overwhelmed with Coronavirus patients. Doctors, nurses, and hospital staff are frantic and hurriedly attempting to keep up with the ever-rising number of desperate cases coming into their care. The actual hospital filmed is in the Italian town of Bergamo, in the province of Lombardy. It is one of the most advanced hospitals in Europe, a fact that illustrates just how behind the curve Italian clinicians have been during this crisis.
The popular twitter conservative Twitter account ALX tweeted this message, which sent the news network into a tailspin with no choice but to publicly retract and apologize for their decision to misrepresent the footage.
“During a Pandemic it is essential that the Media gives us real and accurate information,” the post read. “It’s completely irresponsible for @CBSNews to use footage from an Italian Hospital when talking about the outbreak in New York City. This is unacceptable.”
In the CBS clip published with the original story, the headline read, “America’s Epicenter: New York Now Accounts for More Than Half of New U.S. Cases.”
The intentional misrepresentation was immediately exposed and lead to major embarrassment for the network. They released an apology just a few hours later calling it a “mistake,” and promising that they are “taking steps” to remove the clip and the images from all of their news platforms.
Let’s deal with their calling it a mistake because it’s already glaringly obvious that this kind of corporate management speak is nothing but boilerplate deflection for any organization with a veneer of professionalism.
Calling it a mistake is disingenuous. It is clear that the reason the Italian hospital was filmed in this instance was as part of a report on the Coronavirus. If it was a mistake, and we do not believe it could have been, it would indicate such incompetence that we would expect them to have their journalism degrees revoked.
This was clearly done to strike fear into the hearts of Americans.
This, coming from the network which refused to air damning reports on the crimes of Jefferey Epstein, represents the mainstream news media hitting bottom.
For most people, businesses, and organizations, hitting bottom this hard means destruction, or failure. We believe there should be real consequences — not just a retraction and a red cumulative face.
