Ron DeSantis Wins Again After ‘News’ Outlet Shamed Into Correcting Viral Fake News Story – Opinion

On Tuesday, we reported about how two Democratic strategists notorious for getting it wrong, one of who has over a million Twitter followers, embarrassed themselves with the sharing of a June 2021 Salon piece about legislation signed by Ron DeSantis at the time that they thought 1) was a new news story (it wasn’t, obviously), and 2) treated as the gospel truth though in actuality the piece was a deliberate distortion about what DeSantis actually signed into law.

For those who missed it, the original tweet, seen below via screengrab – still upTwitter went viral as of the time this article was written. The tweet and the story began to circulate, was shared by former Senator Claire McCaskill (D, Mo.)):

Still up: Fake news tweets cc: @birdwatch @TwitterGov pic.twitter.com/2rb8FwXDtJ

— Sister Toldjah 🌻 (@sistertoldjah) July 7, 2022

Though the claims in the headline about the bill were debunked by RedState and even by Politifact of all places a year ago, the original story was never corrected and the “disinformation experts” at Twitter have allowed it to be shared tens of thousands of times without slapping any sort of misinformation label on it. The link was shared by other journalists who were unaware of its year-old status and misrepresented the law.

Though two reporters – ABC News’ Jay O’Brien (who used to report for Florida’s CBS 12) and Florida Politics publisher Peter Schorsch – both alerted Cooper and anyone else who shared the story that it was inaccurate, the post remained up.

At some point over the last couple of days, however, the uproar over the recirculating of the story got the attention of CNN’s Daniel Dale. Though he’s more well-known for acting in the roles of both enabler and apologist for Democrats, Dale nevertheless contacted Salon’s editors about the year-old story. The editors eventually agreed that the headline had to be changed.

It went from “DeSantis signs bill requiring Florida students, professors to register political views with state” to “DeSantis signs bill requiring survey of Florida students, professors on their political views”:

Salon changed the headline for 2021 that incorrectly stated “DeSantis Signs Bill Requiring Florida Students and Professors to Register Political Views with State.” It is not mandatory for professors or students, but anonymous respondents have been concerned about the possibility of being IDed. pic.twitter.com/EIf589mInO

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) July 7, 2022

Here’s the response Dale received from Salon’s executive editor on why the decision was made to change it:

Salon’s executive editor has a comment to share. He says that the headline was defended by the 2021 editor. However, the publication now concludes it “conveyed an misleading impression about what Florida law really said and didn’t live up our editorial standards.” pic.twitter.com/IuauZzaPML

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) July 7, 2022

“Conveyed a misleading impression”? That was my point. I mean, Salon’s underlying message with the original piece was “who cares about facts when there are false narratives to spin and clicks to be had?”

In any event, though it’s good to see this change made, it shouldn’t have taken over a year – and a lot of public shaming – for it to happen. Twitter also likes to say they’re in the business to prevent disinformation from spreading on their platforms. They should have reported it long ago. In an ideal world that’s exactly what they would have done. But because the original “story” meshed right in line with Twitter’s left-wing biases, they allowed it to stand despite the fact that it was false.

The New York Post’s Twitter account was frozen for two weeks in October 2020 by the Twitter powers that be ostensibly on grounds that their story on emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop was fake news. It wasn’t, in fact, fake news, but Salon’s was – and yet the latter’s was allowed to stay up and be shared over and over again.

This disgraceful, ideological double standard will continue until presumptive owners are replaced. Hopefully not for a second. Until then…

Flashback:Ron DeSantis Bites Joe Biden’s Dust when asked about the plot against Brett Kavanaugh