Four in 10 residents was the average number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in those for-profit long-term-care facilities. One possible factor: The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration had already cited 80% of Mississippi’s nursing homes for infection-control problems before the pandemic hit.
Editor Donna Ladd takes readers behind the scenes into the reporting process, and decisions to protect sources, that went into Ashton Pittman’s three-part series revealing disturbing University of Mississippi emails and the identity of a donor whose photos of Black women led to the journalism school’s renaming.
UM Emails Part III: University of Mississippi Journalism Dean Will Norton resigned as email correspondences began to emerge with disparaging comments about gay alum Shepard Smith and about African American students.
UM Emails Part II: In late 2018, a number of University of Mississippi officials struggled to strike a balance between empathizing with aggrieved wealthy white donors who clung to the Ole Miss of yore and responding to a UM faculty and student body that, overall, felt the school was not moving fast enough into the future.
UM Emails, Part I: On Sept. 21, 2018, Oxford and University of Mississippi community members flanked Meek School of Journalism and New Media Dean Will Norton as he denounced a Facebook post by Ed Meek, the school’s top donor and namesake. The Mississippi Free Press examined emails that show that, at the time, Norton knew more than he publicly admitted about the circumstances surrounding the inflammatory post.
A trail of documents and emails shows how a plan to relocate the University of Mississippi’s rebel-soldier statue turned into an enhanced Confederate cemetery some call a “shrine.” But it didn’t happen overnight. The MFP’s investigation unpacks several years of machinations and strategy and lifts the curtain on how it happened.
“They have pulled a fast one here,” the source told the Mississippi Free Press. “They pretended to surrender the position of the monument when they are, in fact, putting it in a (more prominent) place.”
The Mississippi Health Care Association, a political action committee that represents many members of the state’s nursing-home industry, has given $217,500 to Gov. Tate Reeves since 2011, and its lobbying arm spent more than $800,000 on activities at the Mississippi Legislature during his time as lieutenant governor.
Gov. Tate Reeves asked for federal help for three counties after horrific Easter tornados. Jasper County was left out, and residents need help.
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The Mississippi Free Press is a project of the Mississippi Journalism and Education Group, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit journalism organization (EIN 85-1403937).
