According to Lifezette, CBS pulled nurses from the front lines treating actual patients to “exaggerate coronavirus testing coverage.”
The news crew were reporting on the global pandemic in Michigan–a state hit particularly hard by the Covid-19 coronavirus–at Cherry Health Medical Center in Grand Rapids to bolster their coverage for their May 1 segment of “CBS This Morning.”
The “staged” coverage was reported by an insider witness with a hidden camera, who contacted James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, exposing the news corporation pulling medical professionals from the line of duty, and testing actual patients, in order to record the show.
Those in the testing line on camera were not reportedly swabbed for the coronavirus.
One of the recordings captured a nurse saying, “We pretended. There were a couple of real patients, which made it worse.”
Another recording had a nurse say “It’s annoying because we could have done other stuff.”
The footage came with a narration from CBS News reporter Andriana Diaz who interviewed Cherry Health CEO and President Tasha Blackmon, who were discussing supply shortages at the facility.
Blackmon, speaking with Project Veritas, later informed that neither CBS or the hospital had anything to do with the line of cars for coronavirus testing.
She went onto add that she did not know who was being filmed in the cars.
Although CBS released a statement that read “CBS News did not stage anything at Cherry Health facility. Any suggestion to the contrary is 100% false,” Project Veritas found that there had been an increase in testing at Cherry Health facility, showing a longer queue of cars with individuals seeking coronavirus tests.
Following the report from Project Veritas, CBS has since removed the Cherry Health facility portion of Diaz’s segment.
And after Blackmon’s initial remarks on the segment, the Cherry Health CEO issued a new statement, according to Livezette:
“…we learned that a few staff were encouraged to pull their cars up in the testing line to provide a visual backdrop showing how busy the testing site can get… This was done with the intention of protecting patient privacy since many of the patients scheduled for a COVID-19 test on that day declined to be filmed for HIPAA reasons…and expressed deep remorse for this unfortunate situation.”
