Florida Governor Ron DeSantis faces criticism for signing a new bill that changes the states’ mail-in voting process and barring reporters and videographers from local news outlets from covering the event.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, reporters covering the bill’s signing were told that “Fox & Friends” had exclusive rights to the ceremony. Despite this special treatment from DeSantis, it wasn’t something that Fox News requested.

“Fox & Friends did not request or mandate that the May 6th event and interview with Gov. Ron DeSantis be exclusive to FOX News Media entities,” the network said in a statement to The Times.

Furthermore, Fox News producers weren’t aware that the Florida governor would be signing the bill on camera during his appearance on “Fox & Friends,” and DeSantis would defend his decision on granting Fox News exclusive rights.

“We did a wonderful bill signing for this great elections bill,” DeSantis said. “It was live on national television. We were happy to give them the exclusive on that. That’s broadcast to millions of people.”

Nonetheless, many weren’t happy about this decision, and one of the more vocal critics was U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist.

“This is the difference between Gov. Ron DeSantis and me,” Crist stated on Twitter. “He locks out the public and caters to Fox News. When I was governor, I invited everyone in.”

It’s been over a year since the entire world changed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Many people lost loved ones to the virus, and as the United States continues to vaccinate Americans, some news media outlets are doing some reflecting. The Hollywood Reporter reports that CNN will be debuting a documentary called “Race for the Vaccine” on May 15th.

Furthermore, the network’s chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta serves as narrator and producer on the project over global scientists scrambling to produce and manufacture vaccines to combat the virus.

“The vaccines were a global ‘moonshot.’ Once scientists received the genetic sequencing, they raced against the spread of the pandemic, and the emerging variants, to develop the most successful vaccine candidates,” Dr. Gupta said.

Catherine Gale and Caleb Hellerman directed the documentary over 12 months and on five continents to film life-saving vaccine teams battling against COVID-19.

Gale and Hellerman will offer exclusive interviews with scientists who helped find the U.S. National Institutes of Health/Moderna vaccine, the University of Queensland-Australia/CSL vaccine, the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, and the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine.

The documentary will also air in the United Kingdom under a different called, “Vaccine: The Inside Story,” as part of the Horizon series on BBC Two.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused many daily television and radio programs to either go remote or force hosts to be in different areas of the studio. Thursday morning’s “Fox & Friends” program was the first time in over a year that the show took place in their usual couch setting.

“For the first time in — what? A year and a half? — we are back on some semblance of a curvy couch,” Ainsley Earhardt said. “We are six feet apart, and we are all vaccinated.”

“Right, gradually, we’re going to get people back in the studio as things get back to normal,” Kilmeade responded.

Last March, Fox News started shutting down live in-person production of its shows, resulting in the network “reducing the staff footprint” at its New York headquarters. Since September, Fox News has resumed taping from its studios with social distancing protocols in place.

Although there some issues in this return as one of the “The Five” co-host Juan Williams, contracted COVID-19 in early December, according to The New York Times. Nonetheless, it seems as though Fox News is ready to transition slowly back to normalcy with their production.