How Paramount buried a Vice documentary on Ron DeSantis at Guantanamo Bay
Showtime slated “The Guantanamo Candidate,” a 30 minute-long episode of its Vice documentary series, for May 28.
The episode opens with a shot of the outside the US prison complex at the southern tip of Cuba, where Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis served as a lawyer from March 2006 to January 2007.
Vice reporters had secured on camera interviews with a former detainee, Mansoor Adayfi, and a guard at the prison, staff sergeant Joe Hickman. Both said they remembered seeing DeSantis at the prison during a controversial detainee hunger strike. The Vice crew traveled to Guantanamo Bay to attempt to try to speak to military staff, and made several attempts to ask DeSantis about the allegations directly, eventually confronting him at a press conference in Israel, according to a detailed description provided to Semafor.
But Showtime viewers who turned on their televisions May 28 never saw the episode. (They were treated to a re-run of the scripted drama Yellowjackets.)
Showtime and Vice cited “scheduling” in a statement after The Hollywood Reporter noticed the missing episode.
But in fact, two people familiar with the incident said, the Paramount-owned cable channel ditched the DeSantis episode over fears of the political consequences. One person briefed on the decision told Semafor that the company’s Washington lobbyist, DeDe Lea, raised concerns about the piece.
Showtime declined to comment on the decision to pull the episode.
“We not only stand behind our rigorous reporting but are proud of the incredible journalism showcased in this story,” a spokesperson for Vice, Elise Flick, told Semafor.