'The Young Turks' co-host apologizes for false claims about Florida governor's pandemic response

The Young Turks

Ana Kasparian, co-host of the left-leaning "The Young Turks," apologized this week for spreading false information regarding Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' management of the COVID pandemic. Kasparian took responsibility for the errors in previous reporting and acknowledged her biases against DeSantis as a factor in her oversight. She emphasized that she is the executive producer of the show and should be held accountable for the mistake.

Kasparian mentioned that while she doesn't feel bad for having biases against DeSantis, the issue arises when those biases prevent her from seeing the facts of various stories. She admitted to not performing her due diligence and failing to do so in this case.

“I want to correct all of those errors that we had previously reported,” Kasparian said. “And I want to be clear that out of everyone who works on the main show, the only person who should be held responsible for that is me. I’m the executive producer of the show, and I screwed up royally. And part of the reason why I screwed up is because I had all these biases, of course, against Ron DeSantis.”

The co-host specifically referred to discredited conspiracy theorist Rebekah Jones, a two-time Democratic congressional candidate who was fired by the DeSantis administration.

Kasparian expressed regret for misleading the audience into thinking Jones was a hero. She also acknowledged that independent media sources like "The Young Turks" often rely on mainstream media narratives, which can influence their reporting if mainstream media outlets don't carry out their due diligence or allow personal biases to interfere with factual reporting.

“But it becomes a problem when that bias blinds you to what the facts of various stories happen to be,” she said. “And I should have done my due diligence. I failed to do so.”

 Kasparian added:

And by failing to do so, I feel like I’ve misled the audience into thinking that Rebecca Jones is some sort of hero.

Now, to be fair to myself, and to be fair to other independent media sources, if you’re not doing your own original reporting, you’re relying on the mainstream media narrative a lot of the time, and 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 types of stories as well.

Kasparian stressed her commitment to correcting her errors, providing accurate information to the audience, and preventing potential grifters from fundraising off their audience members.