Guerrilla journalist James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas alleges a video clip used by CBS News in a story about coronavirus testing was a staged scene in which organizers asked health workers to make a line of patients look longer.
CBS has denied there was any staging at the Michigan medical center.
The Project Veritas report:
BREAKING: Insider Reveals @CherryHealthMI & @CBSNews Staged FAKE #COVID19 Testing Line on @CBSThisMorning
“We knew they(CBS) were coming, had no clue we were going to have to like do FAKE PATIENTS” – RN, Cherry Health
“There were real patients which made it worse”#ExposeCBS pic.twitter.com/tA4LoS7P22
— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) May 6, 2020
The report said, “A CBS News crew pulled medical professionals off the floor at the Cherry Medical Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to line up in their vehicles so a CBS film crew would have a long line for their COVID-19 coverage.”
A registered nurse there told Project Veritas, “We could have done other stuff.” And a supervisor said, “Apparently, the news crew wanted more people in the line.”
O’Keefe said: “Our insider witnessed the whole thing and came to Project Veritas, because he knew we would protect him. The insider told us that medical personnel were taken away from treating patients and making the line longer for actual patients wait for the COVID-19 test.”
O’Keefe asked the insider: “You’re telling me you’re a hundred percent certain that CBS News, CBS News Corporation – -national, staged a fake event. They faked the news. They faked the reality and broadcasted that to all of their audience last Friday on ‘CBS This Morning.'”
The source replied: “A hundred percent. Absolutely.”
CBS issued a statement declaring it “did not stage anything at the Cherry Health facility.”
“Any suggestion to the contrary is 100% false. These allegations are alarming,” CBS said. “We reached out to Cherry Health to address them immediately. 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. 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.”
Project Veritas reported Nick Ross, a corporate cleaning site supervisor at the Cherry Health facility, said he was there when the CBS News crew arrived and set up the video shoot at the COVID-19 testing site in the parking lot.
“Apparently the news crew wanted more people in the line because they knew it was scheduled,” Ross said.
Project Veritas reported Maria Hernandez-Vaquez, a professional registration specialist, told the insider that Cherry Health Director of Quality and Informatics Glenda Walker helped to organize the facility’s workers into the COVID-19 testing line.
Another registered nurse, Alison Mauro, recorded on hidden camera, said she and other medical professionals working the drive-through testing site did not administer the swab swipe as CBS News was filming. But the actual patients were made to wait longer because of the manufactured line.
The footage accompanied CBS News reporter Andriana Diaz’s narration and interview with Tasha Blackmon, the president and CEO of Cherry Health.
The Louder with Crowder website commented: “Here’s the thing that’s most maddening. Say, purely for sake of argument, that things were as bad as the media and politicians made them out to be. You should WANT them to be not bad. If it turns out we were over-prepared, that should be a good thing. Good news should be, you know, good.
“But good news doesn’t get people to stay home watching CBS News This Morning. Nor does it fit the agenda of the producers. Nor does good news scare people into ceding their lives over to government, going out wearing masks thinking they need to wear masks, and completely abandoning their jobs in order to ‘flatten the curve’ and ‘slow the spread.'”
