Right wing site calls out CBS for ‘faking’ coronavirus testing lines — but there’s more to the story

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CBS News was accused by right leaning Project Veritas of “staging” lines at a coronavirus testing site in Michigan.

At issue is a “CBS This Morning” piece that showed a long line for coronavirus testing at Cherry Health.

Some “fact checking” sites are listing this as “mixed” while others are saying it’s outright false.

Here’s what happened, according a CBS News statement.

CBS News did show up at the Cherry Health facility to film lines of people waiting to be tested.

After the segment aired with the footage in question, CBS was accused of adding people to the lines to make the setup seem busier than it was.

CBS called the accusation “100% false” and “alarming.” In an informal internal investigation, it was discovered that one of Cherry Health’s staffers told “at least one” staffer to get in line along with real patients.

CBS was not aware of this prior to filming the footage.

Cherry Health, for its part, later admitted that “a few” staff members were told they should get in line in their personal vehicles to provide what it called a “visual backdrop” showing what the lines look like.

The company said this was done “with the intention” of protecting patients’ privacy and placed the blame on a single, unnamed employee.

CBS News, for its part, removed the Cherry Health footage from online and repeat versions of the story and updated the accompanying web story to make note of the issue.

The network also noted in its statement that having staffers in line did not prevent from any members of public from getting tested.