CBS Saturday Morning issued a correction to their February 25 report that Florida may ban the children’s book Sulwe under the Stop Woke Act for simply having a black character after a NewsBusters report. However, the correction omitted some key information and left uncorrected similar CBS reports.
The original NewsBusters report was picked DeSantis press secretary Bryan Griffin, who joined those calling out the original misinformation. Michelle Miller, the original disseminator of the misinformation was absent on Saturday, ironically, to receive Howard University’s Alumni Award for Distinguished Postgraduate Achievement. This left co-host Dana Jacobson to deliver the correction:
Now we want to make a correction regarding our story last week about illustrator Vashti Harrison and her work on the book Sulwe about a young girl’s struggle over her skin color. After the piece, we mentioned the book had been banned in some Florida schools and might be banned statewide. We should not have said that the book might have been banned statewide. This is actually a district-by-district process. Our understanding is that the book was removed and then approved by at least one district and is now being challenged in at least one other Florida district.
While the correction beats Andrea Mitchell’s, it is still is short of what it should be. Jacobson does not name specific school districts. This is relevant because local news reports of Sulwe being banned are heavily focused on Duval County, the same county that made headlines when it temporarily removed a book about Roberto Clemente that prompted DeSantis to call out the political games being played.
Duval is also the county that CBS Saturday Morning featured on February 18 with pictures of empty library shelves to make an argument about the state of Florida education under DeSantis. CBS has still failed to issue an on-air correction that the substitute teacher who took those photos was fired for spreading disinformation.
While Mitchell and Jacobson’s corrections were far from perfect, the fact that they were issued within ten days of each other should be a warning sign for the media in how they are reporting on DeSantis and education in Florida. Unfortunately, nothing is likely to change.
This segment was sponsored by Colonial Penn.
Here is a transcript for the March 4 show:
CBS Saturday Morning
3/4/2023
9:04 AM ET
DANA JACOBSON: Now we want to make a correction regarding our story last week about illustrator Vashti Harrison and her work on the book Sulwe about a young girl’s struggle over her skin color.
After the piece, we mentioned the book had been banned in some Florida schools and might be banned statewide. We should not have said that the book might have been banned statewide. This is actually a district-by-district process. Our understanding is that the book was removed and then approved by at least one district and is now being challenged in at least one other Florida district.