As we wrote Tuesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to be the subject of media hit pieces despite his exit from the GOP presidential race, and the likely reason why - at least in my view - is that he continues to produce for his state and be a thorn in the side of the woke left/press.
When last we left you, NBC News was on the receiving end of some criticism after they tried a back door dunk on DeSantis over Census figures that showed 500,000 people left Florida in 2022, which NBC tried to blame in part on the conservative "political climate." What they left out of tweets and didn't put in until about four paragraphs in was that Florida's net migration was actually something to brag about.
READ: NBC News Raked Over Coals After 'Migration' Hit Piece on Ron DeSantis and Florida Falls Flat
This time around, it was the Palm Beach Post, which ran a piece from a columnist accusing the DeSantis administration of spending more on a dashboard that tracked the cost of illegal immigrant healthcare in the Sunshine State than what that healthcare was actually costing.
In an archived version of the column, here's what their news columnist, Frank Cerabino, wrote:
Or to put it another way, the cost of these uncompensated hospital visits, put at $566 million statewide by the agency, is less than the cost of the $577 million taxpayers paid to create the anti-immigrant online dashboard and staff its data collection.
"DeSantis blames undocumented immigrants for healthcare costs. His report cost taxpayers more," blared the original headline.
Except... nope. As Alecia Collins, spokesperson for the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, noted, somebody at the Palm Beach Post misread some numbers - bigly:
Frankly, good journalism is asking questions when you don't fully understand the ins and outs of a program. The dashboard costs around $5k. Total data collection request = $567,882. Neither anywhere close to $577 million. @FranklyFlorida pic.twitter.com/nhUqsWgHdc
— Alecia C. (@AleciaDCollins) April 3, 2024
To make matters even worse for the news outlet, they stealth-edited the column to completely remove the accusation - and by stealth I mean they literally don't have a correction noted anywhere in the updated piece:
Did they just memory-hole this claim without a note or correction? It no longer appears in his post, but no mention of any edits beyond the "updated" tag in the meta. pic.twitter.com/QgNuFcppiN
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) April 4, 2024
Seriously - here is the link that shows the revised story without any note of a correction and here's the archived version, where you can clearly see what was originally alleged.
In response, DeSantis himself dunked on the Palm Beach Post in epic fashion Thursday, pointing to how it's yet another ding against what if any credibility the media has left, and observing that when you're wrong you should just freakin' admit it:
.@GovRonDeSantis calls out the @pbpost for their false claim about Florida’s illegal alien healthcare cost dashboard.
— Jeremy Redfern (@JeremyRedfernFL) April 4, 2024
He blasts @FranklyFlorida’s stealth edit as another example of the media destroying their credibility.
“If you got it wrong, just admit that you got it wrong.” https://t.co/Z8biwCtacC pic.twitter.com/rqbHoUNANX
It's just flat-out bad form for a purportedly reputable news outlet to make a change of this nature without prominently noting it somewhere in the story, preferably at the top. This guy being a columnist, which is a position where you're supposed to give your opinionated view on things, is no excuse.
I'm a columnist at the North State Journal, a statewide newspaper here in North Carolina, and though I definitely make my opinions known in my pieces I also do my best to get the facts of the story correct.
Every single journalist/reporter/columnist/media figure who puts pen to paper with the intent of sharing their thoughts with the public has a duty and obligation to be upfront and honest with readers to the best of their ability and knowledge. And though mistakes are most certainly made even by those of us with the best of intentions, there should still be that note attached to whatever has been written denoting what's been changed and apologizing for it if it's particularly egregious, as it was in this case.
I mean, this is Media 101, and one doesn't need a fancy journalism degree nor to stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night to know that.
No lessons will be learned by the Palm Beach Post on this, of course, which is exactly why the onus will continue to be on readers to set the record straight when they get it wrong - whether intentionally or not.
Update - 5 PM Eastern Time: The paper has gone in and added the below information to their story (see lower right side screengrab) - without calling it an update or correction:
Behold the shifts at the @PalmBeachPost first made with no announcement, after @FranklyFlorida was found to be in error by only $500,000,000.
— Lie-Able Sources (@LieAbleSources) April 4, 2024
1. Original Header
2. Original copy
3. New Header
4. New copy
Initially this was done without notice, but now carries this correction. pic.twitter.com/TKHhgVUrzj
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