CBS News Deletes Activist Headline Telling Companies How to ‘Fight’ GA Voting Law After Major Backlash

Jessica McGowan, Getty

CBS News faced major criticism on social media over a Friday night tweet and headline regarding Georgia’s new voting laws. The tweet was deleted on Saturday, and CBS News changed the article headline after the backlash.

The original, now-deleted tweet sparked the pushback, with a headline that said “3 ways companies can help fight Georgia’s restrictive new voting law” and included a link to an article with that same headline. As users were quick to point out on Twitter, there were no “opinion” tags or disclaimers on the article or tweet. Simply a call to action to support the Democrat-led, liberal reaction to the state’s new law.

That action includes boycotts and pressure on corporations to force their hand in leaving the state or taking their business elsewhere. It’s a strategy that has worked, with liberal activists convincing even Major League Baseball to move the All-Star game out of the state.

Although CBS deleted the tweet and changed their article’s headline, the cache versions and screenshots still exist.

Here’s the original.

The network took a lot of heat, including from media figures such as Fox News host Laura Ingraham and former Fox and NBC host Megyn Kelly, now of her own independent production company Devil May Care Media.

Oh, why thank you ⁦@CBSNews⁩, for your very objective straight news “reporting” on this matter. https://t.co/i0rweO7E9H

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) April 3, 2021

CBS was at one time a real news organization. https://t.co/Dher2lyR3k

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) April 3, 2021

There were many others.

I'm old enough to remember when media outlets at least pretended that they were doing journalism, not activism. https://t.co/Sxm56s2wH4

— Rod Dreher (@roddreher) April 3, 2021

Incredible that CBS News would publish pure political advocacy. This article advocates donor boycotts of specific political figures, spreads political propaganda, and urges passage of a specific bill (HR1). From a news division. Incredible. https://t.co/8aP2NmBkgu

— Byron York (@ByronYork) April 3, 2021

This “news” story should be reported as an in-kind contribution to the DNC. https://t.co/Uc6bCbeqwg

— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) April 3, 2021

I missed the announcement that CBS is now a Democratic SuperPAC. https://t.co/6jdzWUbKjJ

— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) April 3, 2021

Many more conservative figures added their criticisms as retweets or replies overnight and into Saturday. Following that backlash, at around midday on Saturday, this is what you see now when clicking on the tweet.

CBS News likewise changed the headline.

That change did not come with any note or remark, or indication that the story had been updated. On the CBS News Facebook page, the data has been refreshed in both posts of the article to reflect the new headline, likewise without any note. The syndication still shows the original headline in some instances.

The essential substance of the CBS News article remains intact. It accuses Coca-Cola, Delta, and Home Depot of staying “mum” on the “concrete steps they favor to help repeal the Georgia voting law,” with no implied or allowed suggestion that they do not need to comment or that they might not believe it should be repealed.

The article goes through a list of ways companies could pressure government, along with pressure from “activists” for those companies to do so and warnings that “tepid” statements won’t be “enough.” Originally labeled as step-by-step instruction, the article is still effectively the same thing under a different headline.

Although the headline has changed, there has not been, at the time of this posting, a new and revised tweet of the article from CBS News.

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