Naples News Wrongfully Smeared Congressman DeSantis In Partisan Hit Piece

Naples News reporter Ana Ceballos shunned all journalistic integrity with a misleading, defamatory article about Congressman DeSantis and the David Horowitz Freedom Center

Ana Ceballos’s recent piece lies about Congressman Ron DeSantis and slanders the David Horowitz Freedom Center and makes most fake news look good by comparison. Ceballos claimed that DeSantis, in an appearance at the event the Freedom Center holds every year at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, had, among other sins, “suggested killing Muslims.”

The exact quote from his speech about the threat of terrorism, as Ceballos must have known, was not about Muslims at all. “You can kill the terrorist,” DeSantis said, “and we should kill the terrorist. But unless you attack the underlying ideology that fuels terrorism, there will be new terrorists that will come forward.” To further her Big Lie, Ceballos did not mention that immediately following this statement, DeSantis spoke at length about the coalition Americans must build with peaceful Muslims like Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

In other words, DeSantis wants terrorists to be dead so that non-extremist Muslims can live in peace. This has been U.S. policy since before 9-11. In addition to her mendacious claims about DeSantis, Ceballos also attacks the David Horowitz Freedom Center itself. To substantiate her implication that the Freedom Center is racist and reactionary, she cites the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which she claims “tracks hate groups and white nationalists.”

This shows how sloppy and irresponsible Ceballos’s journalism is. Did she not know that four days before her piece appeared in the Naples News, the SPLC was forced to pay $3.3 million and issue an apology to the Quilliam Foundation for calling it an anti-Muslim hate group in the same database where it makes a similar accusation against the Freedom Center? Did she not know that over 60 groups stigmatized by the SPLC are considering launching a major defamation lawsuit against the organization and that even liberal commentator Bill Maher has said that he would like to join such an effort?

Ceballos’s article on Congressman DeSantis and the David Horowitz Freedom Center is itself an example of the hate speech it pretends to censure. If it had appeared as an opinion piece, it would have indicted only Ceballos herself. The fact that it appeared as a news story indicts the Naples News. What could have possessed it to publish such a vile and shoddy piece?

David Horowitz is a noted conservative commentator and New York Times bestselling author. He is the founder and CEO of the David Horowitz Freedom Center in Los Angeles and the author of The Black Book of the American Left.