Category Archives: Freedom of Speech and of the Press

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Why doesn’t The Philadelphia Inquirer report the whole truth about the city’s public schools.

Thanks to former city councilwoman Helen Gym Flaherty’s failed campaign for the 2023 Democratic nomination for Mayor of the City of Brotherly Love, this site has reported several times on the Edward T Steel Elementary and Middle Schools, noting something that The Philadelphia Inquirer never bothered to tell readers as Mrs Flaherty, who campaigned on her educational record, used that school as a backdrop for her campaign, proudly telling the voters that she helped keep the school from “going charter.” What didn’t the newspaper tell its readership? That the school had an absolutely abysmal academic performance. That school is ranked 1193th out of 1591 in Pennsylvania Elementary Schools and ranked 656th out of 875 in Pennsylvania Middle Schools. Schools are ranked on their performance on state-required tests, graduation, and how well they prepare their students for high school. In the current rankings, 8% of students tested grade-level proficient in reading, and 2% of students who scored at or above the proficient level for math.

This Philly principal struggled as a student. Now she inspires kids in Kensington.

Awilda Balbuena was one of several School District of Philadelphia principals recognized with the 2025 Lindback Award for Distinguished Principal Leadership.

by Kristen A Graham | Tuesday, April 8, 2025 | 5:00 AM EDT

Gloria Casarez Elementary School, via Google Maps.

Awilda Balbuena graduated from high school unable to read proficiently. She was rejected from every law school she applied to.

Now, she’s one of Philadelphia’s best school leaders, the recipient of a 2025 Lindback Award for Distinguished Principal Leadership.

Balbeuna’s rise is remarkable, but emblematic of what the Gloria Casarez Elementary principal tells the students and staff of the Kensington school: There is promise and power inside all of us, and with hard work, we can accomplish great things, even among difficult circumstances.

“I want to breathe hope into people who were discouraged like I was,” said Balbena. “This isn’t your most uplifting neighborhood; it’s not like you’re going to leave my school and go run into hope. You have to go looking for hope. You have to be connected to someone who has that hope.”

It’s a moderate-length article, in which the newspaper’s primary education reporter tells us about Principal Balbuena’s early struggles and how she eventually overcame them. But in all of the positives Miss Graham told readers about the Principal’s personal accomplishments, she omitted the same thing that the newspaper’s stories on Steel School omitted: basic indices on how well the school is educating its students.

Well, The First Street Journal doesn’t omit things like that. We actually look up the data!

At Gloria Casarez Elementary School, 3% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 12% scored at or above that level for reading.

Compared with the district, the school did worse in math and worse in reading, according to this metric. In Philadelphia City School District, 31% of students tested at or above the proficient level for reading, and 14% tested at or above that level for math.

Gloria Casarez Elementary School did worse in math and worse in reading in this metric compared with students across the state. In Pennsylvania, 53% of students tested at or above the proficient level for reading, and 37% tested at or above that level for math.

Flags mounted outside Casarez Elementary School.

Compared to other schools? Casarez Elementary ranked 1193rd out of 1591 Pennsylvania Elementary Schools overall, 1523rd in reading and 1563rd in math. The school was 102nd out of 136 city public elementary schools.

I suppose that’s better than the Edward T Steel schools, but that’s damning with faint praise!

The rankings weren’t difficult to find at all; Google is our friend, and we have no doubts at all concerning Miss Graham’s ability to do that research.

It has to be asked: why did Miss Balbeuna win a 2025 Lindback Award for Distinguished Principal Leadership when the school she runs is doing such a terrible job? Gloria Casarez Elementary School’s function is not to promote the personal achievements of its principal and staff but to actually educate children. In that, the school is failing, and that means the Principal has failed.

The image of Casarez Elementary gleaned from Google Maps included the school’s flagpole. It’s a bit difficult to see, but it’s there: an American flag, with an “LGBTQ+” flag immediately below it. What, exactly, is being taught at this Kindergarten through 5th grade school? It would seem rather obvious that reading and mathematics aren’t being taught well enough, certainly not well enough for the school to be wasting times on alternative sexual preferences and identifications.

But, whatever is being done in the Gloria Casarez Elementary School, it is being done wrong.

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#Hamas and the #Palestinians have told us who they are; why are so few people willing to believe them?

Imagine, if you will, that there were ubiquitous iPhones and the internet, and social media in 1944. The scenes, which Joseph Goebbels would be doubtlessly pushing across the West, of German families shattered by the deaths in collapsed houses due to Allied bombing, of orphaned children rescued from the rubble, where they had been buried next to their dead parents.

Were today’s American and European left alive in 1944, but with today’s mentality, we would be seeing all sorts of plaintiff cries on Quitter — the 1944 version of Twitter — saying that Germany was clearly defeated, that the Allied armies were at the Rhine and the Oder-Neisse and the Third Reich had been expelled from all of the territory it had captured in the war, and we should declare a ceasefire, leaving everything in place, to stop the killing, to stop the unnecessary deaths.

That, of course, would have left Adolf Hitler and his henchmen alive, and the concentration camps that were in Germany proper operating. All of the actual extermination camps were located in occupied Poland, to keep them secret from German civilians, but the fanatical FĂźhrer and his equally insane Schutzstaffel would have adapted camps like Bergen-Belsen in Germany for more mass killings. Continue reading →

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The left want to control language; don’t let them!

We have previously noted how the left attempt to use control of language to control the argument. The Associated Press Stylebook, which is used by many, though certainly not all, credentialed media sources, specifies language which reinforces the notion that a person can define his ‘gender’ as something different from his biological sex, and that such choices can, should, and must be accepted by society as real. The First Street Journal maintains its own Stylebook, and we do not go along with the silliness of the AP.

The Philadelphia Inquirer either uses the AP Stylebook, or maintains its own policies to identify the ‘transgendered’ by the gender they claim to be rather than their actual sex, but reporter Susan Snyder decided to go one step further, and hammer down on the feminine pronouns, just to make sure the reader got it. Continue reading →

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Soft-peddling the Gangs of Philadelphia

Ellie Rushing, from her Twitter profile.

If there’s one thing of which no one can accuse Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Ellie Rushing it’s laziness. Her author profile states that her beat is “cover(ing) criminal justice and law enforcement in Philadelphia, including how crime and the court systems impact communities,” and there’s certainly plenty of that in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia.

Miss Rushing gave us a deep look into the West Philly gang Young Bag Chasers, about whom we have nine times previously noted. Despite the fact that we were reliably informed by the newspaper that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes had “beefs” with other cliques, and that we have previously reported that the newspaper really, really, really doesn’t like to refer to gangs as gangs, Miss Rushing, though using other descriptions occasionally for prosaic reasons, does refer to “YBC” as a gang occasionally.

But, sadly enough, in a very in-depth article, one that the research of which must have put the reporter in some physical danger, Miss Rushing gives us far too many excuses as to how and why the gang became a gang and the gang members became gang members. Continue reading →

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The left really do hate Freedom of Speech and of The Press

This site has previously noted that, despite their protestations about protecting democracy, today’s left really hate our Freedom of Speech. Media Matter for America, a thoroughly left wing group, posted on Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏, which is part of my Freedom of Speech! — a bubble diagram and link to their article “The right dominates the online media ecosystem, seeping into sports, comedy, and other supposedly nonpolitical spaces“. Very unsurprisingly, Amy McGrath Henderson, the twice-failed Kentucky congressional candidate who once stated, in a fundraiser not in the Bluegrass State, “I am further left, I am more progressive, than anyone in the state of Kentucky,” said of the graph, “This is way more important than we want to admit.”

The right dominates the online media ecosystem, seeping into sports, comedy, and other supposedly nonpolitical spaces

Continue reading →

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Can The Washington Post be saved? The newspaper industry has updated as much as possible, but it's still 18th century technology.

We have previously reported on how owner Jeff Bezos’ decision that The Washington Post not make any endorsement for President in 2024 cost the newspaper hundreds of thousand of subscriptions.

But now columnist Joe Concha of the New York Post says that Mr Bezos is doing what is necessary to save one of our nation’s newspapers of record:

Three cheers for Jeff Bezos, fighting to save The Washington Post from itself

By Joe Concha | Thursday, March 6, 2025 6:52 PM EST

Jeff Bezos is one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs — but making his Washington Post staffers face reality may be his toughest-ever career challenge.

A long time ago in a media galaxy that now seems far, far away, the Post was one of the most respected newspapers in the country, capturing 68 Pulitzers in the process. Continue reading →

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The New York Times and the control of language

I wonder if it will be approved.

At 10:56 AM EST I submitted a comment on The New York Times main editorial, “The MAGA WAR on Speech.” The Editorial Board is aghast that the Trump Administration has done radical things such as “The National Park Service (having) erased the letters T and Q: from L.G.B.T.Q. references on its website describing the Stonewall National Monument in New York City.” I responded:

On November 29, 2018, the Times gave OpEd space to Chad Malloy[1]Chad Malloy is a man male who claims to be a woman who goes by the faux name “Parker” Malloy. to write, “How Twitter’s Ban on ‘Deadnaming’ Promotes Free Speech.” On October 4, 2019, the Times gave OpEd space to Andrew Marantz to claim that “Free Speech Is Killing Us.” When Elon Musk bought Twitter, promising to promote greater free speech, Times Editorial Board member Greg Bensinger told readers that “Twitter Under Elon Musk Will Be a Scary Place.”

The Associated Press’ Stylebook mandates that ‘black’ be capitalized when referring to race, but not ‘brown’ or ‘white.’ More, the AP Stylebook has media all across the country referring to the transgendered by their preferred, fake names and the pronouns of what they claim to be, rather than what they actually are.

The left have been attempting to control the debate by controlling the use of language for as long as I’ve been aware of it.

Continue reading →

References

References
↑1 Chad Malloy is a man male who claims to be a woman who goes by the faux name “Parker” Malloy.
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Joy Reid and DEI: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

With the news that MSNBC has cancelled Joy Reid’s prime time show, my Twitter feed filled up with the laments of the left over that, and the inevitable complaints that she was fired because of raaaaacism the network hates black women. Former Representative Jamaal Brown (D-NY) tweeted:

Joy Reid educated a nation every single night. She is a beacon on MSNBC and all of media! Shame on MSNBC for this. SHAME SHAME SHAME! We have to build our own multimedia empire. Anchored in truth, and justice and humanity. We stand up for Black people, and GAZA and the LGBTQ, and oppressed people and vulnerable people everywhere! And we will never stop!

I absolutely support the right of Dr Brown — he tells us that he’s an “Ed.D.” in his Twitter handle — to build his own multimedia empire! We have freedom of speech and of the press in this country, and anyone can say anything he wishes, can start and try to build a show, at network, a publishing empire, whatever.

Elie Mystal, whom Dr Brown included in his tweet, is the “Justice Correspondent and Columnist” for The Nation, the socialist-left opinion journal, so he had plenty of space to express his opinion.

The Value of Joy

By canceling Joy Reid’s cable news show, MSNBC has not only silenced a brilliant host: It’s silenced the next Black voice you haven’t yet heard.

Continue reading →