Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we offer the latest on Florida’s alleged book banning, debunk a misleading NPR report, and hit more media misses.
Florida ‘Book Ban’ Media Frenzy Persists Despite All Available Facts
In an effort to debunk claims that Florida is banning books, Governor Ron DeSantis held a press conference last week where he shared sexually explicit material from books found in some of the state’s public-school libraries.
The reaction to the material immediately proved his point: that many of these books were not suitable for children.
Nikki Fried, the chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party, shared a tweet from DeSantis of the banned materials and wrote, “Ron posting butt plug porn to own the libs.”
Hours later, seemingly having realized she played into the hands of the governor, she switched tactics: “Of course this book doesn’t belong in school — but which Republican Education Commissioner or Governor allowed it to be there? Time to pull the plug on your plan to remove history books and stop tickling your base, @GovRonDeSantis.”
Several media outlets had to cut their feeds of the press conference when DeSantis presented the graphic content found in the school libraries, according to DeSantis’s press secretary Bryan Griffin.
WFLA investigative journalist Masha Saeidi confirmed her own station’s feed was cut during the “5 minute video showing sexually explicit content/books that DeSantis’ office says were found in Florida schools”:
Meanwhile, videos of the event posted to Twitter were flagged as having “potentially sensitive content.”
During the press briefing DeSantis spoke out against what he called a “book ban hoax.”
“There was a Duval County school video where they took a video of empty bookshelves and they say, ‘the state of Florida doesn’t want books, they’re trying to censor books’ and all this stuff. Turned out that was a hoax,” DeSantis said, adding that “a lot of what’s been going on is an attempt to create a political narrative, and it’s a false political narrative.”
The governor shared an infographic of myths and facts around Florida’s laws, which clarified that Florida schools have not, in fact, been directed to “empty libraries” and “cover classroom books.”
“School districts are required to report the number of books removed from schools based on legislation passed in 2022,” it adds. “Of the 23 districts that reported removing materials, the most removed were tied at 19 in Duval and St. Johns Counties — not even close to a whole classroom library. Of the 175 books removed across the state, 164 (94%) were removed from media centers, and 153 (87%) were identified as pornographic, violent or inappropriate for their grade level.”
DeSantis’s presentation did little to nothing to dissuade activists and the mainstream media, however.
Equality Florida blasted DeSantis in a Twitter thread: “FACT: This true story of a pair of male penguins raising a chick together at the Central Park Zoo has been BANNED in Lake County, Florida, citing Don’t Say LGBTQ as the reason,” the group said, referring to the Parental Rights in Education Law that prohibits instructors from teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms.
The group also cites the removal of books in Duval and St. Johns County, as acknowledged by DeSantis’s infographic, as a “gotcha.”
“DeSantis owns the impacts of his agenda of classroom censorship & book banning,” the group tweeted. “He decided to build a presidential campaign using cruelty as currency & hitching a ride with right wing extremists.”
It added: “Ask yourself: how far will he take his agenda to feed his own ambitions? How many parents’ rights will he trample? How many bookshelves will he empty? How much history will he censor? How many educators will he drive from their careers? How many communities will he target?”:
As NR’s Ryan Mills reported in January, the law at hand, H.B. 1467, aims to provide transparency about school instructional materials and requires trained media specialists or school librarians to vet and approve all school reading materials. Schools are also required to publish a list of all media-center and classroom books on their school’s website.
Mills’s reporting offers evidence that it was not the state laws themselves driving “book bans,” but confusion and overreactions from local districts. Manatee County school district told teachers to temporarily remove any unvetted books from their classroom libraries until they could be approved by a trained media specialist out of concern that an existing law would leave teachers open to being charged with a third-degree felony if an inappropriate book was found in school.
Duval County school district seemingly operated under the same concern. However, as Mills reports, H.B. 1467 does not address penalties. A separate Florida law on the distribution of “harmful materials” to minors, indicates that it is a felony to provide kids with “explicit” materials — depictions or recordings of “nudity or sexual conduct, sexual excitement, sexual battery, bestiality, or sadomasochistic abuse.” But that law is not new and does not apply only to schools.
Nonetheless, instead of holding school districts accountable for their own decisions about which books to ban, the Washington Post doubled down on faulting DeSantis with an opinion piece claiming that the governor’s “book ban mani targets Jodi Picoult — and she hits back”:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants you to know he’d never dream of engaging in mass censorship. He held a recent event challenging criticism of his classroom book restrictions as a “hoax,” releasing a video suggesting only “porn” and “hate” are targeted for removal.
There’s a big problem with DeSantis’s claims: The people deciding which books to remove from classrooms and school libraries didn’t get the memo. In many cases, the notion that banned books meet the highly objectionable criteria he detailed is an enormous stretch.
This week, Florida’s Martin County released a list of dozens of books targeted for removal from school libraries, as officials struggle to interpret a bill DeSantis signed in the name of “transparency” in school materials. The episode suggests his decrees are increasingly encouraging local officials to adopt censoring decisions with disturbingly vague rationales and absurdly sweeping scope.
CBS, for its part, was left to correct a misleading report that claimed Florida may ban a book for having a black character:
And despite mounds of negative media coverage of DeSantis, The Guardian published an opinion essay claiming that, “It’s appalling to see the media lavish DeSantis with so much fawning coverage. Especially after all he has done.”
Headline Fail of the Week
“Autopsy reveals anti-‘Cop City’ activist’s hands were raised when shot and killed,” a recent NPR headline reads. However, the Post Millennial found that, not only was the piece misleading, it was authored by an Antifa-supporting intern.
The story centers on the police shooting of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán. Investigators found officers fired at the suspect in self-defense after he failed to follow commands and shot a state trooper. The reporter, Kaity Radde, suggests the Antifa extremist had his hands up when he was killed — citing an unofficial autopsy ordered by Terán’s family — and falsely suggested that the officer shot by the gunman was hit by friendly fire. The piece also suggests the gunman “expressed a commitment to nonviolence” before his death, though he was reportedly a member of the Antifa group that attacked officers in the woods near the site of Atlanta’s future Public Safety Training Facility.
Radde previously argued in the Indiana Daily Student that Antifa “isn’t a terrorist organization,” because they act “mostly in self-defense and in the defense of others.”
Media Misses
-NPR tweeted that Michelle Yeoh won the Oscar for Best Actress on Sunday, “making history as the first person who identifies as Asian to win the award.” The tweet led Twitter to affix an additional context tag explaining: “The tweet is factually correct, but missing context to explain wording. Merle Oberon was the first Asian woman nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1935. Oberon hid her heritage to avoid discrimination. Michelle Yeoh, however, is open about her Asian heritage.”
-The Associated Press falsely claimed that a West Virginia proposal would “ban evidence-based health care for transgender minors.” The measure, which was passed by the state legislature, “would outlaw those under 18 from being prescribed hormone therapy and fully reversible medication for suspending the physical changes of puberty, allowing patients and parents time to make future decisions about hormone therapy,” the article adds. “The legislation also includes a ban on gender-affirming surgery for minors, something medical professionals emphasize does not happen in West Virginia anyway.” Yet as Reuters reported, long-term results on outcomes for transgender youth who have received gender-transition care is “years away” and is therefore hardly “evidence-based.”
-An NBC News reporter falsely claimed that a whistleblower from the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital was a receptionist who “has no business making medical claims.” “I don’t even think she qualifies as a ‘whistleblower,’” reporter Kat Tenbarge claimed. “She’s a rogue receptionist with an agenda. No expertise in the area she’s commenting on.” In fact, the whistleblower was a case manager at the clinic who said she left the practice over her feeling that it was “permanently harming the vulnerable patients” in its care.