I wrote earlier about a story that spread far and wide, helped by a CNN report, that four teachers died from COVID within 24 hours in Broward County.

CNN then tried to hook it up to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his ban on mandating masks, leaving it up to the parents to decide for their own children.

BREAKING: WFOR is reporting that 4 teachers from Broward county have died of covid in a single day.

Three were unvaccinated. We don’t know the status of the 4th. pic.twitter.com/uT4XW7irc5

— Brianna Keilar (@brikeilarcnn) August 13, 2021

But as I noted, school hasn’t even started in Broward County, and doesn’t start until August 18. So any teachers who got sick did so while on vacation, on summer break, and it had nothing at all to do with mask mandates, no mask mandates, or the schools.

But there was another point I made — that people/journalists should have been questioning such a claim, to begin with. Because just on the face of it doesn’t sound true. It sounded like one more lie to try to hurt DeSantis. I also asked had anyone actually determined the validity of the story, since all the media just seemed to be citing what the teacher’s union president said. How do we even know that was true?

Well, not to say I told ya so, but I told ya so. It wasn’t true, and this was a major journalism fail.

The story originally claimed three teachers and a teacher’s assistant had died within 24 hours of COVID.

Now the media is walking back that statement.

Correction: The Broward Teachers Union originally announced three teachers had died but has since issued a correction saying two teachers have died. https://t.co/HhErUXgDMR

— WSVN 7 News (@wsvn) August 13, 2021

Even now, even with this correction, they’re still only citing the teacher’s union president. How do they even know this correction is accurate? How do they know that whole 24 hours thing was accurate? Or that it was “from COVID” and not “with” COVID?

But they wouldn’t have had to backtrack if any of them had just done their job and double-checked what they were being told by the teacher’s union president, who made it clear that she had issues with DeSantis. No one thought they should check, particularly when it’s an interested party telling them this story? But the media doesn’t care, because they got the lie out there. The CNN hosts can shake their heads soberly and attack DeSantis, although he had nothing to do with it.

Meanwhile, it’s another example of how the media is out of control, pushing political narratives with no care for the actual truth, journalism, or their responsibilities to the public.