CBS, the same network that was caught using footage from a chaotic Italian emergency room during a coronavirus story about New York City, created more fake news last week.
According to Project Veritas, a CBS News crew wasn’t satisfied with the COVID-19 testing scene at the Cherry Medical Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan, so they took medical staff away from their duties and got them to line up in their cars, pretending they were patients waiting for a test.
An insider tipped off James O’Keefe, founder and CEO of Project Veritas, about the scheme.
“You're telling me you're a hundred percent certain that CBS News, CBS News Corporation--national, staged a fake event. They faked the news. They faked the reality and broadcasted that to all of their audience last Friday on “CBS This Morning,” O’Keefe asked the source.
“A hundred percent. Absolutely,” the person responded.
Nick Ross, a corporate cleaning site supervisor at the Cherry Health facility, said he was there when the CBS News crew arrived and set up the video shoot at the COVID-19 testing site in the parking lot, "Apparently the news crew wanted more people in the line because they knew it was scheduled.”
Maria Hernandez-Vaquez, a professional registration specialist, told the insider that Cherry Health Director of Quality and Informatics Glenda Walker helped to organize the facility’s workers into the COVID-19 testing line.
“It's just annoying cause we could have done other stuff,” said one registered nurse there recorded with a hidden camera by a Project Veritas insider.
The nurse said personnel at the medical center were given the heads-up to expect the CBS News crew. “We knew they were coming. We had no clue that we’re going to have to, like, do fake patients.” (Project Veritas)
Real patients were forced to wait longer for their tests because of the stunt.
On a hidden camera, one registered nurse who was working the line said they “pretended” to administer tests to the fake patients while the CBS News crew recorded. “There were a couple of real patients, which made it worse,” she said.
CBS News denied the allegation that they had anything to do with the stunt to Project Veritas.
"CBS News did not stage anything at the Cherry Health facility," the statement said. "Any suggestion to the contrary is 100% false. These allegations are alarming. We reached out to Cherry Health to address them immediately. They informed us for the first time that one of their chief officers told at least one staffer to get in the testing line along with real patients. No one from CBS News had any knowledge of this before tonight. They also said that their actions did not prevent any actual patients from being tested. We take the accuracy of our reporting very seriously and we are removing the Cherry Health portion from the piece."
BREAKING: Insider Reveals @CherryHealthMI & @CBSNews Staged FAKE #COVID19 Testing Line on @CBSThisMorning
— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) May 6, 2020
“We knew they(CBS) were coming, had no clue we were going to have to like do FAKE PATIENTS” – RN, Cherry Health
"There were real patients which made it worse"#ExposeCBS pic.twitter.com/tA4LoS7P22
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