Watch CBS anchor Scott Pelley’s heated confrontation with alt-right blogger Michael Cernovich
When CBS correspondent Scott Pelley sat down with Michael Cernovich, founder of alt-right blog Danger and Play, on Sunday night's episode of 60 Minutes to discuss fake news, it quickly became apparent that Cernovich's definition of "truth" was not the same as Pelley's. Cernovich's blog — which Pelley noted has "become a magnet for readers with a taste for stories with no basis in fact" — was one of several websites that pushed the Pizzagate story, the conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton was operating a child sex-trafficking operation in the back of a D.C. pizzeria which led a man to open fire in that pizzeria last December.
"These news stories are fakes," Pelley said, right off the bat. "They're definitely not fake," Cernovich said, insisting the stories were "not lies at all" and "100 percent true."
When Pelley asked if Cernovich was just saying that because "it's important for marketing" his website, Cernovich maintained he believed it. "I don't say anything that I don't believe," Cernovich said, claiming that's a "high bar" because he's an attorney.
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Pelley pointed to a baseless headline published on Cernovich's blog, "Hillary Clinton has Parkinson's Disease, physician confirms," to see if he could get Cernovich to admit that may have been "misleading." The story was sourced to an anesthesiologist who had never met the Democratic presidential nominee, and was later denied by the National Parkinson Foundation and Clinton's doctor.
But Cernovich stood by it. "I don't take anything Hillary Clinton is gonna say at all as true. I'm not gonna take her on her word," he said. "The media says we're not gonna take Donald Trump on his word. And that's why we are in these different universes."
Watch the 60 Minutes segment below. Becca Stanek
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