The Texas Rangers’ team name must go

As the Washington football team finally gives up its racist slur of a name, there is one major sports team that has avoided the spotlight and resisted meaningful engagement with the violent and racist implications of its name. To know the full history of the Texas Rangers is to understand that the team’s name is not so far off from being called the Texas Klansmen.

FOX 35 INVESTIGATES: Hospitals confirm mistakes in Florida’s COVID-19 report

By Robert Guaderrama
Published 16 hours ago
Updated 1 hour ago
FOX 35 OrlandoCountless labs have reported a 100 percent positivity rate, which means every single person tested was positive. Other labs had very high positivity rates. FOX 35 found that testing sites like Centra Care reported that 83 people were tested and all tested positive. Then, NCF Diagnostics in Alachua reported 88 percent of tests were positive.

How could that be? FOX 35 News investigated these astronomical numbers, contacting every local location mentioned in the report.

The report showed that Orlando Health had a 98 percent positivity rate. However, when FOX 35 News contacted the hospital, they confirmed errors in the report. Orlando Health's positivity rate is only 9.4 percent, not 98 percent as in the report.

MORE NEWS: What the record-shattering number of positive COVID-19 tests in Florida really means

The report also showed that the Orlando Veteran’s Medical Center had a positivity rate of 76 percent. A spokesperson for the VA told FOX 35 News on Tuesday that this does not reflect their numbers and that the positivity rate for the center is actually 6 percent.

FOX 35 News has yet to hear from the other labs or the Florida Department of Health to explain how the error could have been made on an official report.

NEW YORK TIMES WRITER PENS DAMNING RESIGNATION LETTER, ACCUSING THE PAPER OF BULLYING EVEN MODERATE AND CENTRIST JOURNALISTS

by Kevin Ryan

New York Times opinion columnist and editor Bari Weiss today announced her resignation in a scathing letter, saying she was bullied by colleagues in an "illiberal environment," weeks after declaring there was a “civil war” inside the paper over whether to publish content outside a strict progressive narrative.

Her resignation letter, posted on her website, encapsulates everything going wrong with the print media in America, pointing out how writers who don’t follow a tightly proscribed left-wing ideology find themselves pushed out.

The following are selected quotes from Weiss’s letter. I also highly encourage everyone to read the entire letter (see link at the end of this post):

It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am resigning from The New York Times.

I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago. I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives and others who would not naturally think of The Times as their home. The reason for this effort was clear: The paper’s failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers…

But the lessons that ought to have followed the election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. Instead,

…a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else…

Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative…

Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.

Part of me wishes I could say that my experience was unique. But the truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times. Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? And so self-censorship has become the norm…

Op-eds that would have easily been published just two years ago would now get an editor or a writer in serious trouble, if not fired. If a piece is perceived as likely to inspire backlash internally or on social media, the editor or writer avoids pitching it. If she feels strongly enough to suggest it, she is quickly steered to safer ground. And if, every now and then, she succeeds in getting a piece published that does not explicitly promote progressive causes, it happens only after every line is carefully massaged, negotiated and caveated…

The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people…

Standing up for principle at the paper does not win plaudits. It puts a target on your back. Too wise to post on Slack, [colleagues] write to me privately about the “new McCarthyism” that has taken root at the paper of record.

For these young writers and editors, there is one consolation. As places like The Times and other once-great journalistic institutions betray their standards and lose sight of their principles, Americans still hunger for news that is accurate, opinions that are vital, and debate that is sincere. I hear from these people every day…

I can no longer do the work that you brought me here to do—the work that Adolph Ochs described in that famous 1896 statement: “to make of the columns of The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.”

Ochs’s idea is one of the best I’ve encountered. And I’ve always comforted myself with the notion that the best ideas win out. But ideas cannot win on their own. They need a voice. They need a hearing. Above all, they must be backed by people willing to live by them.

SOURCE: https://www.bariweiss.com/resignatio...U-UPl9cekRWZ9Q