For those of us who already have low expectations of the left-wing media, they are working to lower that bar even further in their coverage of the Florida governor. Ron DeSantis.
You’d think these news organizations would have learned from the Trump derangement syndrome when they burned the trust of so many institutions, including their own, by trying to fight President Donald Trump. Instead, they’ve simply replaced DeSantis in their activist, bile-filled, often-downright wrong rants.
A 2021 Pew poll found that Republicans who have “some confidence in national news organizations” have halved since 2016, from 70% to 35%. Among all adults, that number dropped from 76% to 58%.
That’s no accident: 2016 was when these outlets stopped trying to be remotely fair—something they’ve rarely been able to do in the first place—and started openly discussing how to “handle” Trump. They settled on “It’s all a Russian disinformation scheme” and pretended that a hostile country was controlling the president. When it was found that all of this was a lie, they just moved on.
They can’t run that playbook at DeSantis, they’re trying a new way. He is bossy!
CNN reporter John Blake sent this memo to DeSandi’s press secretary, Brian Griffin, seeking comment after the government’s weeklong shutdown at the high school: “I spoke with one of the nation’s leading scholars of fascism, who , along with another scholar who is an authority on fascism, say DeSantis’ decision echoes similar decisions made by fascist dictators to force what one historian calls a ‘collective amnesia’ about the past.’
I’m writing a piece calling the governor a fascist, care to comment? And how long have you been beating your wife?
Griffin tweeted Blake’s request, pulling back the curtain on how hits are made calling America’s most popular governor a “fascist.”
The Daily Beast ran a completely fictitious account, likely written in crayon, with the DeSantis team paying Twitter influencers and bot farms.
Lindsey Curnutte, director of communications for DeSantis’ political group, flatly denied that claim, which the Beast has yet to retract, telling me: “Enthusiasm for the Governor. DeSantis is created through his tireless work to keep Floridians free without paying for retweets. We don’t pay influencers to tweet, nor do we pay bot farms. Curnutte added: “Do people do that?”
It’s not just the Beast and CNN. Somewhat more respectable media organizations have also gotten in on the act. The New York Times breathlessly reported that DeSantis is forcing the College Board to change courses in his Advanced Placement high school African American Studies course that included things like “queer theory” and a left-only perspective on abolition of prisons. The Times notes that “there will no longer be critical race theory,” which is interesting because the Times previously argued that CRT is never used in K-12 education. Ouch. If only facts or consequence mattered.
President of the American Federation of Teachers special interest group Randi Weingarten, who unnecessarily forced long school closures that hurt black children the most, tweeted: “How can Governor DeSantis delete all the black history?’
State law already mandates the teaching of black history in Florida schools, as DeSantis has repeatedly pointed out, but activists like Weingarten will willfully ignore it and her friends in the media will follow suit. They don’t really care about education or nonsense like intersectional teaching in the name of “black history” — they want to hurt a potential Republican nominee in 2024 and everyone knows it.
They also don’t bother doing what the old-fashioned fact-checking news organizations did. Like when a video of a Florida classroom with empty bookshelves went viral and the Washington Post reported it was because teachers were afraid of getting arrested because of a new Florida law requiring books to be age-appropriate and non-pornographic. The Post was forced to issue a correction – teachers will not They’re actually facing felony charges for having bad books on their shelves — but it’s exactly that kind of hysteria that the media is targeting DeSantis.
I have yet to meet any parents who think scanning books for pornography before allowing children access is bad. In fact, this is a pressing concern because parents hold it discovering pornography in their children’s school libraries and they don’t want that.
DeSantis, for his part, speaks directly to Floridians and calmly explains his policies, which Floridians continue to support despite the media frenzy. He comes to his press conferences armed with facts and never lets the media cover him. He and his team teach a master class in how to handle the dishonest press.
But they shouldn’t. Even those who don’t share his politics should speak up and say the coverage is absurd and the lack of trust in news organizations has hurt us all, but they won’t because there’s an election to win.
Twitter: @Karol
