The Miami Herald’s publisher threw Cuban-born columnist Armando Salguero under the bus for tweeting that he is “sick of the America bashing” from people like NFL quarterback Ryan Tannehill.
“I am so sick of the America bashing by people who have never lived and would never live anywhere else,” wrote the sportswriter, who immigrated to the United States from Communist Cuba.
Ryan Tannehill says the United States of America “was founded upon racist ideas…”
I am so sick of the America bashing by people who have never lived and would never live anywhere else.pic.twitter.com/xHgA8nHvyN— Armando Salguero (@ArmandoSalguero) August 28, 2020
Salguero shared a video in which Tannehill said, “These systematic oppressions have been going on for a long time, hundreds of years. This country was founded upon racist ideas, with slaves being brought here from the day of foundation.”
“We’re tired of dealing with the systematic oppression,” Tannehill, who is white, continued.
After Salguero called Tannehill out for his false claim that the United States was “founded upon racist ideas,” the Miami Herald quickly clarified that Salguero’s comments did not represent the newspaper.
“The right to free expression and a free press are foundational to our democracy,” wrote Mindy Marques, the Herald’s publisher and executive editor, on Friday. Retweeting Salguero’s post, she continued, “@ArmandoSalguero is a @MiamiHerald sports columnist and unlike reporters, columnists have broad latitude to express their opinions. Those opinions do not reflect the views of the Miami Herald.”
The right to free expression and a free press are foundational to our democracy. @ArmandoSalguero is a @MiamiHerald sports columnist and unlike reporters, columnists have broad latitude to express their opinions. Those opinions do not reflect the views of the Miami Herald. https://t.co/MAIgDrT975
— Mindy Marques (@MindyMarques) August 28, 2020
The next day, Marques reversed herself and refused to defend even Salguero’s free speech, turning on him at the behest of unknown numbers of angry staff and readers.
“His comments were uninformed, insensitive and deeply troubling,” she wrote on Saturday. “For that, we apologize. We expect our columnists to base their opinions on reporting and facts. We are addressing this matter internally.”
While columnists have broad latitude to express their opinions, his comments were uninformed, insensitive and deeply troubling. For that, we apologize. We expect our columnists to base their opinions on reporting and facts. We are addressing this matter internally.
— Mindy Marques (@MindyMarques) August 29, 2020
“To be clear, @ArmandoSalguero’s tweets do not reflect the views or values of the Miami Herald,” she added.
To be clear, @ArmandoSalguero’s tweets do not reflect the views or values of the Miami Herald.
As a journalism company, the foundation of our work is finding the facts and reporting them.
We are disappointed that @ArmandoSalguero linked to a source that is not credible.— Mindy Marques (@MindyMarques) August 29, 2020
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), another Cuban-American, blasted Marques’s decision to condemn Salguero’s comments. “There is nothing insensitive or inappropriate about rejecting the view that America was founded on racism,” Rubio said in a statement provided first to The Federalist. “America was founded with a Declaration that ‘all men are created equal.’ It was the failure to live up to this founding principle that stained our history with racism, bigotry, and discrimination, and left us with our still open wounds.”
“America was founded on equality,” Rubio added. “This is why bigotry and racism is un-American. No one should be ‘cancelled’ for believing that.”
Marques also tweeted, “We are disappointed that @ArmandoSalguero linked to a source that is not credible.” In a separate tweet, Salguero had shared a video from the conservative educational site PragerU titled, “Why the 3/5ths Compromise Was Anti-Slavery.”
In the video, former Princeton University professor Dr. Carol Swain notes that the U.S. Constitution refers to enslaved individuals as persons. She also suggests that northern states, not southern states, disapproved of counting slaves as persons for purposes of congressional representation, because counting slaves would give the southern states more power in Congress.
Although this appears to be the source Marques dismissed as “not credible,” Marques failed to elaborate what part of the video was inaccurate. That’s because she can’t.
Meanwhile, Tannehill’s claim that slaves were brought to America “from the day of its foundation” is historically debatable. The 1619 Project, a project of the New York Times Magazine that has been criticized by historians for its numerous inaccuracies, calls the year 1619 “the beginning of American slavery,” when slaves were brought to the English colony in Virginia. But the settlement in Jamestown, Virginia — the “first permanent English settlement in North America” — was founded by British colonists more than a decade earlier, in 1607.
Time Magazine noted that Spanish settlers brought African slaves to St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565. And numerous Native American tribes kept slaves long before European settlers arrived on the continent.
Time also notes that the first documented African to come to America, Juan Garrido, was a free man who traveled to Florida with Juan Ponce de León in 1513, more than 50 years prior.
While Marques was quick to condemn Salguero’s free expression, other Miami Herald writers have gotten away with crude name-calling, labeling the Republican Party a “hate group,” and commenting that crowded beaches would “work nicely to thin the ranks” of Republican voters by increasing coronavirus transmission.
A screenshot of a now-deleted tweet shows Herald writer David Neal calling Jessica Fernandez, chairwoman of the Florida Federation of Young Republicans, a crude sexual name.
He later apologized, insisting that he didn’t know the term’s connotations and thought he “made [it] up on the spot.”
In a previous Tweet to @JessStandsOut , I used a term I thought I made up on the spot. I did not know it was St. Lucian slang for a sexual act.
I apologize.
— David Neal (@DavidJNeal) August 28, 2020
In April, Twitter users recorded Herald columnist Fabiola Santiago joking about coronavirus killing Trump supporters, in a now-deleted tweet. Santiago was reprimanded, but not fired, for her comments.
https://twitter.com/KonniBurton/status/1252012310815703041
Another Herald writer, opinion columnist Leonard Pitts Jr., called the Republican Party a “hate group,” later insisting it “wasn’t hyperbole.”
I guess you never read the columns where I called the GOP a hate group, then. And it wasn’t hyperbole. https://t.co/nJBlPUQ7pa
— Leonard Pitts, Jr. (@LeonardPittsJr1) August 27, 2020
Pitts also appeared to link Republicans to the Ku Klux Klan, tweeting that “every time a Republican quotes Martin Luther King, a Klansman gets his hood.”
Every time a Republican quotes Martin Luther King, a Klansman gets his hood. pic.twitter.com/igWwP6xRPe
— Leonard Pitts, Jr. (@LeonardPittsJr1) August 27, 2020
