For a few years, the Media Research Center ran the DeSantis Defense Brigade, an effort to defend anything and everything Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis did as a way to prime his presidential campaign. After his campaign fizzled out even after the MRC’s numerous in-kind contributions, the effort was essentially abandoned. But it has attempted a few recent examples of DeSantis-fluffing. Intern Lucas Escala served up some of that in a June 20 post:
Friday’s CBS Mornings rightfully touted the successful evacuation of Americans trapped in Israel through the efforts of Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL), a headline you would expect would be getting more attention. However, their broadcast network competitors ignored the story entirely. Rather than cover real news, particularly news that would paint a Republican governor in a positive light, channels like ABC and NBC decided instead to cover irrelevant events.
[…]Shark conservation efforts and sperm donors were far from the most pressing issues in America. So why were major news outlets opting to cover them over the rescue of American citizens in Israel? The most obvious explanation was that liberal media did not want to give credit to DeSantis for his efforts.
[…]There was no excuse for networks like NBC and ABC to ignore this story, one that served as testament to the State of Florida’s commitment to protecting its citizens and the citizens of the United States. But instead of giving a Republican governor credit, those networks chose to hide the story, wasting their airtime on irrelevant stories.
Tim Graham spent a June 22 post complaining that CBS covered an insufficiently large anti-DeSantis protest:
Question: How large does a protest have to be for the liberal media to consider it a “groundswell”?
Answer: If it’s a leftist protest, you can have less than ten.
Consider the case of Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida A&M University. On Wednesday’s CBS Evening News Plus,anchor John Dickerson pushed this story:
[…]The problem? CBS only showed about seven protesters! WCTV, the CBS affiliate in Tallahassee, began its story: “At least 10 Florida A&M University students gathered on campus at Eternal Flame Wednesday morning to rally against Marva Johnson, who was elected as the university’s next president last month.”
Were three of them having a cigarette break?
Tom Olohan gushed over DeSantis in a July 7 post:
Under a new law, Florida won’t be giving a dollar to anti-free speech groups seeking to silence disfavored media outlets by choking off their advertising revenue.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis blocked organizations like media ratings firm NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index from receiving any state funds. This marked the latest blow to the left’s attempts to rate, stigmatize and drive away ad dollars from outlets that challenge them on COVID-19, transgenderism and other issues.
DeSantis signed Florida’s 2026 budget on June 30, which included a provision “prohibiting a state agency from using state funds to contract with an advertising agency or other contractor who acts as or uses the services of media reliability and bias monitors.”
The Media Research Center has repeatedly called out NewsGuard for its flagrant, biased ratings in favor of leftist and legacy media sources, as demonstrated in three successive MRC studies.
We’ve documented how the MRC’s war on NewsGuard is itself highly biased and shoddily researched, including those purportedly “biased ratings” it loves to complain about.