60 Minutes' failure, Version 2.0

When Democrats need to attack a Republican, they often get help from CBS. They don't pick CBS that I know of. It's just that 60 Minutes is a reliable ally in CBS News's partisan fights. It all started with Rathergate back in Sept., 2004. Back then, CBS Nightly News anchor Dan Rather tried peddling a story that President George W. Bush had gone AWOL when he was part of the Texas Air National Guard. Rather insisted that Bill Burkett's documents were authentic. When that story collapsed, Rather insisted that the supposedly incriminating documents were "fake but accurate." Eventually, Rather was fired after being "taken to task for going to air with a controversial "60 Minutes II" story that questioned President Bush's service in the National Guard, a piece that turned out to be based on allegedly forged documents." The newest anti-GOP hit piece happened when 60 Minutes selectively edited Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' reply to a 60 Minutes question. There's little question that this was a hit piece. Here's what 60 Minutes aired on their pay-to-play hit piece: This is the entire clip: It's impossible to not notice the difference between the 60 Minutes edited tape and the full tape. The propagandist (I can't call her a reporter) started with the premise that Gov. DeSantis was operating a pay-to-play scheme:
The 60 Minutes episode was deeply unethical. Sharyn Alfonsi, the reporter for 60 Minutes whose story it was, comes off like a political activist in her interaction with DeSantis, accusing the governor of "pay-to-play" after cornering him at a press conference. DeSantis for his part calmly provided a detailed response to the unfounded accusation, pointing out that CVS and Walgreens were playing other roles in the vaccine distribution at longterm healthcare facilities and that Publix did not have an "exclusive" distribution rights to the vaccine. But the public would not get to hear his response, at least not from CBS. In an appalling edit, 60 Minutes cut the DeSantis answer to make him seem abrasive and angry and to make his comprehensive answer seem flimsy.
Alfonsi accused Gov. DeSantis of giving Publix an exclusive contract to distribute the vaccine. She made that accusation despite the fact that CVS and Walgreen had gotten contracts to vaccinate Floridians in mid-Decemmber. So much for the exclusivity accusation.

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