CNN is apparently so desperate for shocking pandemic headlines that it has resorted to elevating a woman who claims, without evidence, that Florida’s official coronavirus figures are bogus.
At least, a hunger for clicks and eyeballs seems like the most reasonable explanation for why the cable news network this week hosted Rebekah Jones, who alleges she was fired from the Florida Health Department for refusing to manipulate the state’s coronavirus infection and fatality numbers.
“Rebekah Jones,” reads a CNN headline hyping its interview this week with Jones, “the data official behind Florida’s Covid-19 dashboard, was removed after she questioned the data’s transparency, according to Florida Today. Now she has launched her own dashboard, which reports different numbers.”
Jones, whom the cable network bills as a “data scientist,” herself told CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota, “There are a few brave souls at [the health department], who still talk to me and communicate with me … I’ve checked the numbers myself through the data.”
Worse than the fact that Jones is presented as some sort of healthcare and infectious disease expert (she is neither; her background is in geography and journalism), is the fact that the discrepancy between the state’s official tallies and what she says are the real numbers is not even that great.
Some scandal.
Rebekah Jones, the data official behind Florida’s Covid-19 dashboard, was removed after she questioned the data’s transparency, according to Florida Today. Now she has launched her own dashboard, which reports different numbers.https://t.co/BTNXSgi4ul pic.twitter.com/J7aCVy2F6s
— New Day (@NewDay) June 24, 2020
To CNN’s credit, and unlike Jones’s recent appearance on MSNBC, Camerota at least questioned whether the supposed whistleblower has evidence showing she was fired for refusing to manipulate Florida’s COVID data. Tellingly, Jones sidestepped the question. This is where credit for CNN begins and ends. Jones’s refusal to present proof of her conspiracy was good enough for Camerota, who left the matter alone after that.
Jones also claimed at one point during the interview that Florida officials are “deleting” fatality numbers. She said later of this same claim that the issue is merely a categorization difference, which state officials openly admit and discuss. Camerota declined to press the “data scientist” to explain the discrepancies in her account.
All that said, the biggest problem with Jones’s story, and the reason it is so irresponsible for networks to parade her around as some sort of coronavirus expert, is that it does not stand up to scrutiny. She claims Florida officials are engaged in a shadowy conspiracy to bury the real COVID-19 numbers because the governor’s office is desperate to reopen the state. But even a casual inspection of Jones’s personal calculations, which she has made available with the help of a homemade online dashboard, shows that her figures do not differ all that much from the state’s official tallies.
As I noted earlier when Jones appeared on MSNBC:
And as if Jones’s failure to offer proof that she was fired for refusing to falsify the data, consider that her dashboard not only uses the state figures she now questions but that she also just adds more coronavirus cases and a few more deaths by counting them slightly differently. That is her entire story, and the networks, including CNN and MSNBC, are working extra hard to make something out of it.
It is mind-boggling that anyone in this industry would think that now is the time to puff up an uncorroborated coronavirus conspiracy theory. There is already enough legitimately alarming pandemic news to go around.
