Reporter April Moss Says Bosses Objected to Candace Owens Interview, Vaccine Questions

April Moss, the reporter at a Detroit CBS station who was fired for saying on-air she was planning to accuse her employer of discrimination, says her complaints largely concern coronavirus vaccinations, with a bit of Candace Owens and Gayle King in the mix.

In a video released by James O'Keefe and his Project Veritas late Tuesday, Moss complains that when she suggested interviewing Candace Owens during International Women's Month, the idea was nixed as "too political," and she was instead assigned an interview with Dr. Joneigh Khaldun of the Department of Health and Human Services.

When she interviewed Khaldun, Moss asked her to clarify her statement that COVID-19 vaccines prevent the need for hospitalization, since "there have been many studies showing that people have been hospitalized after the vaccine."

The doctor assures Moss of the efficacy of the treatment and says that negative reactions "are not necessarily directly related to the vaccine," but Moss tells O'Keefe that behind the scenes "my producer in my ear was saying, you know, 'move on to the next question.' He did not want me to talk about [it]."

She said her boss wanted her to ask softball questions such as, "Who inspires her," but she counters that it "would have been careless of me as a journalist not to ask" hard questions about the vaccine.

Moss says that the episode occurred not at her primary station where she's a meteorologist, but at a sister station where she occasionally filled in as a reporter.

Moss also shows a May 24 email allegedly from parent company ViacomCBS that reads, "Vaccine Hesitancy: we are using the power of our brands to encourage viewers to get the vaccine when available."

"I don't think that this is journalism at all. I think that this is propaganda," Moss told O'Keefe.

Moss also interviewed CBS This Morning host Gayle King, asking her, "You have a lot of voices out there saying there's fake news. How do you encourage those people watching today to stay objective in their journalism?"

"When I hear 'fake news,' I never think they're applying—that it applies to us," King says, prompting O'Keefe to show video of cars lined up at a COVID-19 testing site in Michigan for a segment on King's show last year. For that operation, O'Keefe interviewed a whistle-blower claiming the news crew wanted more cars for their cameras so put staffers in the line.

"We knew [CBS News was] coming, we had no clue that we were going to have to, like, do fake patients," a nurse says in the undercover video.

Moss, addressing O'Keefe but referring to King's assertion there's no "fake news" at CBS says, "It's a shame, because over the last couple of months I've seen personally that there have been stories that CBS has run that were proven to be fake."

But Moss and her former station weren't involved with the story that allegedly exaggerated the length of a line of cars—and her claims of bias are more vague than that year-old example.

"I do know that there are people within our organization who definitely know that CBS has a slant, and it slants more to the left," Moss says.

Moss' biggest complaint seems to be that she was segregated from the rest of the staff due to her unwillingness to discuss whether she had been vaccinated, coupled with her refusal to wear a mask. Her station required Moss to work from home while others were allowed on-set.

She says her request to human resources that she no longer be tested since lockdowns were lifted was denied. She says she was told ViacomCBS would pay her to get vaccinated but if she chose not to be, and continued to shun testing and masking, she'd be separated from other staffers until at least July 6.

"Every person on Earth has the right to breathe fresh air, and to segregate somebody is completely inhumane," she tells O'Keefe. "As an on-air personality it's very obvious to the viewers, 'Wow, she's never in the studio; she's always at her house.'"

She complains that due to CBS segregating her, the network was signaling her private non-vaccinated status not only to viewers, but to her coworkers, as well.

There's very little secretly recorded video in O'Keefe's latest effort, the largest section being a phone call where she spoke to one of her bosses after her Sunday broadcast announcing her intentions to speak out.

"Why would you do that? You know, basically, that's the most selfish thing I've ever seen in 36 years working there. Without even a close second. Because you don't give a crap about anybody else ... I'm going to recommend that you get terminated," CBS 62 chief engineer Chuck Davis says in the call.

"I was hoping there would be—there would be a change," Moss responds.

"The only change is going to be, you know, our weekend weather person," Davis says, referring to Moss.

WWJ-TV said in a statement that "April Moss objected to WWJ-TV's policies regarding COVID-19 testing and wearing masks inside our station, which are based on CDC, state and local guidelines. Any suggestion that she was in any way a victim of 'discrimination' due to her concerns about these policies is completely false. In fact, we allowed April to perform her weather anchor duties from home as we explored her concerns."

Moss is the second local reporter since last Monday to claim on-air that she teamed with Project Veritas to reveal alleged bias, the first being Ivory Hecker of KRIV-TV in Houston.

In video featuring Hecker and O'Keefe, there is more undercover, secretly recorded footage than there is in the one featuring O'Keefe alongside Moss.

Hecker's alleged evidence of bias included a boss telling her that she "failed as a reporter" for allowing a doctor to tell her during an interview that he successfully uses hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 patients. She also showed footage of a boss objecting to bitcoin stories because they wouldn't play for a "poor African American audience."