
Rebekah Jones' firing the Covid clickbait the media dreams of but it’s all fake - downerending
https://tallahasseereports.com/2020/05/20/rebekah-jones-firing-is-the-covid-clickbait-the-media-dreams-of-but-its-all-fake/
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javagram
From a comment on the linked page:

> Well that’s a solid hit piece, considering she doesn’t actually have a
> criminal record; all of the cases that the author highlights were nolle
> prossed or no info’ed, and wouldn’t be admissible in any court, except the
> court of public opinion. This was 100% a character hit piece.

That said there isn’t enough information out there to understand why Jones was
fired or removed from the project in the first place. Journalists have already
requested internal memos under Florida’s Sunshine Law, the truth will come out
over the next few weeks I assume.

Sounds like it might have been a workplace argument that led to a reassignment
and then a firing because of her email letting her contacts know not to
contact her re: the dashboard anymore was construed as suggesting a coverup.

The sexual harassment stuff or prior problems with the law seems totally
unrelated and just something that was dragged up after this hit the news.

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downerending
That's true--her prior possible crimes or status as a sexual harasser
shouldn't be relevant to the specific question of whether something improper
happened.

In 2020, of course, it's unfortunately quite relevant in the court of public
opinion.

For us in the cheap seats, it's interesting data as we watch the story unfold,
and wonder what actually might have happened here. Nothing we can do about it
either way. It's a reminder, though, not to jump to conclusions at every
headline. Most truth is never revealed, and even that that is is rarely
revealed promptly.

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marcusverus
You meet Bill. Bill wants to work for you. Bill is a nice guy and is qualified
to do the job.

You run a background check on Bill. It turns out that Bill has a criminal
history including charges of assaulting an officer and cyber-stalking an ex.
Is your opinion of Bill affected in any way? _Of course it is._ Bill has a
history of making terrible decisions. You would be remiss if you didn't
question his temperament and fitness for employment.

Point being, Rebecca has a history of making bad decisions. How does that not
affect your take on whether on whether she is a credible accuser?

This isn't a '2020' thing, it's a 'having all the data' thing.

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javagram
Considering the person in question hasn’t been giving detailed interviews she
really can’t be described as a “credible accuser” anyway. We haven’t really
gotten a description of what the accusation even might be.

It would make far more sense to just get her and her supervisor on record and
a copy of any emails between them before we need to jump to impugning anyone’s
character because of dismissed criminal charges.

Edit: here is the only other detailed communication I’ve seen so far and it
really just isn’t clear what’s happening here or why she was fired.
[https://mobile.twitter.com/FBSaunders/status/126286780574299...](https://mobile.twitter.com/FBSaunders/status/1262867805742997504)

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downerending
Seems slanted (like most media these days), but has interesting tidbits:

The site is based on ArcGIS, and Jones' PhD is in geography.

The claim is that the "state's official epidemiologist" asked for data export
to be disabled until they verified the dates in the data.

According to the administration, she was fired for "a repeated course of
insubordination".

Perhaps most intriguingly, she was previously arrested for battery on a police
officer and resisting arrest at LSU. She had also been previously charged with
three felonies, including robbery, and a misdemeanor case of "sexual
cyberstalking".

I hope other sources will chase down that last bit, but if it holds up, it
would seem to support the idea that she decided to (figuratively) set
everything on fire on her way out.

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perl4ever
What if what was going on behind the scenes was she was told to do something
unethical or her past would be revealed? And now it's being done, because she
balked.

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downerending
I thought I was paranoid, but I bow to your skills. :-)

If I walked the earth looking for someone who really cared about the date
field in some state's pandemic database, I think it would be a long walk.

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perl4ever
Nobody cared in advance; I'm assuming it _is_ a manufactured controversy, but
I'm just speculating that it started with a database of dirt on public
employees that someone used to create the situation, as part of long running
efforts to create chaos. Not with some random person doing something for no
reason.

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jonny_eh
> Jones was asked to temporarily disable the ability to export data from the
> dashboard so that it could be verified that the data matched other sources

Maybe, or maybe she knew it wouldn't be temporary and that the given reason
was BS. We don't know, and we should therefore take this claim with the same
grain of salt that we should take Rebekah's.

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downerending
I do believe in taking virtually everything with a grain of salt these days.

That said, merely disabling export (as opposed to shutting down the website
entirely) sounds like an incredibly stupid way to try to censor something,
even by the standards of bureaucratic ineptitude. If there were any real smoke
there, one could just send a few dumps to interested journalists, etc.

And as we've been seeing, a lot of CV data has been pretty crappy, especially
the initial cuts. The idea that they were trying to present valid statistics
doesn't really seem that far-fetched.

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jonny_eh
> send a few dumps to interested journalists

That wouldn't help if the cover-up is meant to block the daily trickle of bad
news.

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Farfromthehood
FYI, source article is from a fringe, right-leaning "news media." I belong
they have a staff of 5.

