A 60 Minutes segment on Sunday night focused on the “growing trend of right-wing book bans” that they report were inspired, in part, by the parental rights group Moms for Liberty.
The report by correspondent Scott Pelley featured a sit-down interview with the group’s co-founders, Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice. Pelley opened his report before his interview with the group leaders by chiding activist parents fighting against sexually explicit materials in school libraries as pushing “conspiracy theories” and claimed they “threatened librarians,” in addition to calling school board members “groomers.”
60 Minutes initially focused on Beaufort, South Carolina and reported that their book battle was about “mostly young adult novels with minority, gay, lesbian or transgender characters” and were in mostly “high school libraries.”
The CBS report omitted the numerous book battles by multicultural parents across the country, including Montgomery County and Carroll County, Maryland, where they fought sexually explicit and LGBT-themed storybooks in school libraries and classroom instruction for elementary-age students.
The CBS news show went on to claim the push for “book bans” was based on the website “BookLooks” and omitted that BookLooks had started in March 2022 but prior to this, parents were going viral on social media for attending school board meetings around the country and sharing their discoveries of what books were in their children’s libraries including a Fairfax County, Virginia mother-of-six Stacy Langton in September 2021.
The report then turned to the Moms for Liberty founders to explain their views, and the exchange grew heated and the report was frequently interrupted by Pelley’s interjections of commentary.
“Parents send their children to school to be educated, not indoctrinated into ideology,” Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice said.
“What ideology are they being indoctrinated into?” Pelley asked.
Descovich replied, “Let’s just say children in America cannot read.”
Pelley then interrupted the interview with narration over the visual of his interview with the two women, claiming, “They often dodged questions with talking points.”
“You’re being evasive,” Pelley accused the parents. “What ideology are the children being indoctrinated into? What is your fear?”
“I think the parents’ fears are realized,” Justice said. “They’re looking at these books where sexual discussions are happening with their children at younger and younger ages.”
Pelley again shared his opinion of what was happening in the interview as Justice appeared to be reading examples from books that she brought to the interview to show the sexually explicit nature of the books.
“Tiffany Justice read from sexually explicit books written for older teens but found in a few lower schools,” Pelley said. “Most people wouldn’t want them in a lower school. But in a tactic of outrage politics, Moms for Liberty takes a kernel of truth and concludes these examples are not rare mistakes but a plot to sexualize children.”
Moms for Liberty responded in a social media post stating that the interview had been recorded in October, which gave the show “months to spin their narrative.”
Descovich claimed to share the “actual” unedited transcript of the exchange with Pelley, and she revealed a different narrative.
Pelley had asked, “I’ll ask this as simply as I can. What ideologies do you find troubling?”
In the part allegedly left out of the report, Descovich responded to his question, “I was just saying that your question was about fear. And if this is a fear based movement? I feel like that’s a misnomer. This is a fact based movement. Parents are joining us in droves because they open the backpacks, they see the lessons, the light bulb goes off and they say ‘what in the world is happening?'”
She continued, “I thought my child was being taught to read. I thought my child was learning this or that. And then they have a lesson in, in kindergarten or first grade that tells them they can choose their gender. They can be a boy or a girl.”
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“You can call it ideology, you can call it whatever you wanna call it. But what got interjected and when, why, why would someone want to teach my 5-year-old that he could be a boy or a girl, neither or both, and they can change,” the Moms for Liberty co-founder said. “That’s not something I believe is true. Let’s stick to the facts. Let’s stick to what everyone agrees is the facts.”
“Billboard Chris” Elston responded on social media to the 60 Minutes report, calling the show “dishonest” and slammed them for misreporting key details about the group that “anyone who did 3 seconds of research would know.”
