The Young Turks co-host Ana Kasparian apologized publicly to her far-left audience last night for giving air time to the discredited Florida Democratic activist and Ron DeSantis critic Rebekah Jones.
Jones is a former Florida Department of Health data analyst. She received widespread media attention during the COVID-19 pandemic when she accused the DeSantis administration of urging her to alter the state’s coronavirus data, a claim that the state inspector general later determined to be false.
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More recently, Jones accused Gov. DeSantis of ordering her son’s arrest.
I've shared these videos with the Miami Herald. I've also shared the video of them putting him in handcuffs. We were told to bring him in believing he would come home with us.
— Rebekah Jones (@GeoRebekah) April 6, 2023
However, she turned in her son herself after he made several threatening posts.
Here is the video of leftist activist Rebekah Jones & her husband Jacob Romer turning in their son to the Santa Rosa Sheriff's Office in Florida after he was wanted on suspicion of planning a mass shooting at school. Jones went ultra-viral on Twitter for saying her son had been… pic.twitter.com/CiNaUb1zPN
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) April 6, 2023
Rebekah Jones: "DeSantis had my 13-year-old son arrested!"
Rebekah Jones' son: *Threatened multiple times to shoot up his school* pic.twitter.com/ayBMvJzv59
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) April 6, 2023
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Ana Kasparian reported this story on The Young Turks network without fact-checking Jones’ claims, leading to her walking back her earlier claims. However, even during her address of the problem, Kasparian managed to sideswipe DeSantis anyway.
“Part of the reason I screwed up is that I have all these biases, of course, against Ron DeSantis. And I don’t really feel bad about that because I think Or DeSantis has done some pretty terrible things in the state of Florida.”
Kasparian did eventually apologize for the wrongdoing.
“But it becomes a problem when that bias blinds you to what the facts of various stories happen to be. And, I should have done my due diligence, I failed to do so, and by failing to do so I feel I misled the audience that Rebekah Jones is some sort of hero.”
In her apology, Kasparian took ultimate responsibility for the “screw-up.”
“I want to be clear that tout of everyone who works on the main show, he only person that should be held responsible for that is me. I’m the executive producer of the show and I screwed up royally,”
However, Kasparian hedged her statements, noting that all shows and news sources that didn’t involve original reporting relied on trusting the reports of others, such as the Mainstream Media, who Kasparian accused of being impacted by bias as well.
“If they’re not doing their due diligence, if they’re allowing their personal biases to stand in the way of actual, factual reporting, well, that’s unfortunately going to trickle into the way independent news sources cover these stories as well,”
Kasparian isn’t wrong about this. Rebekah Jones has been featured prominently on some of the largest news outlets. Her stories were elevated to a national level by CNN and others in 2020, a part of attempts to attack DeSantis during COVID.
She also regretted promoting Jones, who she says is likely a grifter, claiming she wants to “avoid helping someone who might be a grifter from fundraising off of our own audience members.”
One Twitter user summarized Kasparian’s statements well.
“Ana Kasparian admits that TYT didn’t fact check the Rebekah Jones nonsense due to her not liking DeSantis & wanting to get him. She acknowledges this was the reason the media ran with the claims as well. She apologizes to audience members who donated to her scam GoFundMe as well”
Ana Kasparian admits that TYT didn't fact check the Rebekah Jones nonsense due to her not liking DeSantis & wanting to get him. She acknowledges this was the reason the media ran with the claims as well. She apologizes to audience members who donated to her scam GoFundMe as well pic.twitter.com/cPCbBLi78H
— Sean Fitzgerald (Actual Justice Warrior) (@IamSean90) April 13, 2023
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