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"Florida This Week" is made possible in part by support from the "Tampa Bay Times".

Coming up next, Tampa hosts an historic Super Bowl, the governor compares big tech to big brother when it comes to blocking some social media content.

Are corporations backing away from politicians who hold extreme views?

And Black leaders call for more vaccines to be available in their communities.

Our guests are Bishop Thomas Scott, a former Hillsborough County Commissioner, Steve Contorno, the political editor at the "Tampa Bay Times".

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, professor of law at Stetson University College of Law and John Romano, sports columnist at the "Tampa Bay Times", next on "Florida This Week".

(newsy orchestral music) - Welcome back.

For the fifth time, Tampa is hosting a Super Bowl and it's happening against the background like no other.

- [Reporter] Only Miami, New Orleans and Los Angeles have hosted more.

For the first time in the 55-year history of the championship, it's being held in the home city of one of the competing teams.

Even the officiating on the field will be historic with the first woman ever, Sarah Thomas, acting as a referee.

It's set against the background of tension in the country still deeply divided over the election and the assault on the US Capitol.

And then there's coronavirus, which is on track to kill a half million Americans.

Vaccinations have given us some hope, but they're not yet widely available and the distribution is uneven across the state.

Florida's grocery stores were in the news this week.

In one case, a reporter found that in a Naples store, neither customers nor staff were wearing masks, even though Collier County has a requirement that masks be worn to guard against the spread of the coronavirus.

And "The Wall Street Journal" reported last week that an heir to the public supermarket fortune paid $300,000 to cover the cost of the rally that proceeded the storming of the US Capitol.

Former President Trump's trial on inciting the insurrection at the Capitol begins on Tuesday.

- A coalition of pastors this week called for a more robust response from the state of Florida in getting COVID-19 vaccinations to communities around the state, communities of color.

The group is pushing officials to place vaccination sites in traditionally underserved areas.

Bishop Thomas Scott is the pastor of the 34th Street Church of God in Tampa and is part of the group and he joins us now.

And Bishop, I almost called you commissioner, Bishop Scott, welcome to "Florida This Week".

- Thank you very much and thanks for having me.

- So, tell me, what is the problem in the African American community?

I've seen numbers that say that Blacks are being vaccinated at far lower rates than our people in the White community.

- Yeah, I think when we look at the situation where we are now, one is that African Americans are dying at a higher rate from the COVID-19, four times more according to the national average, okay?

Secondly, because of disparity already in healthcare, now the problem has compounded itself.

So now, we are not getting the vaccine or vaccination into the African American community, which on a scale on the national average where African Americans at this point only got about 5%, I think it's about 5% in terms of the vaccine considering or compared to 60% compared to non-Hispanic whites.

- So, what ideas does the pastors group have for making sure that more people in the African American community get vaccinated?

- Well, we believe that one of the ways to have access and be available to the vaccine is through the Black church.

Historically, the Black church has always been a pinnacle or the establishment whereby we gather, African American gather and by and large represent a large portion of the African American community.

So, the Black church is the key.

And so, the panel of African American pastors on Tuesday had a press conference calling for the Black church to be more involved, be more engaged and that the vaccine actually is run through the African American community, through the Black church.

- So, the governor's initial plan was to use some grocery stores, especially Publix, as a way to get the vaccine out.

How efficient or how well does that serve the Black community?

- It does not serve it well at all because when you look at where the Publix are located, they're not located in African American community.

In fact, I've been around a long time, served as county commissions, city council and all that, I do not know of any Publix in the Black community in Hillsborough County.

So, even though Publix is available or they have the vaccine, but yet many African Americans do not have access because Publix are not in the African American community.

- Bishop, what role do experiments on African Americans in years past, like the Tuskegee experiments, what role does that play in making people fearful of perhaps taking the vaccine early?

I mean, it's only been out for a couple of months.

Does that play a role in people's reluctance to get the vaccine?

- I think that may play a role in that.

There's always apprehension about anything of this nature coming out so early, but however, I think it's one of education.

I think you gotta educate the community regarding it, I think it gotta be available and accessible and then we're having problems.

I mean, even myself, I would like to think I'm kinda stupid when it comes down to make an appointment or to get online on a computer, but I was not able to do that.

And so, I think that that may have a small portion in terms of the Tuskegee experiment, but I think the larger issue is the education component and accessibility to the vaccine.

- And in addition to enrolling churches and getting them involved in the distribution of vaccine, are there any other things that you think the state government should be doing to make sure that more people get access to the vaccines?

- Yeah, I think it's important that we partner.

I think it is important that we partner with the state, federal government.

This time that we'll be having another hearing on the 10th of February, another meeting on the 10th of February and we'll be talking to the White House how it's important to engage the Black church, the Black community through the Black church.

So, one is being able to have vaccines available in the Black church so that we can get the people in the community so they can get the vaccine or get the vaccination.

I think that's gonna be critical and very important.

- Well, Bishop Thomas Scott, great to see you.

Thanks for coming on "Florida This Week".

- Well, thank you for having me and my pleasure.

- Go Bucs.

- Go Bucs.

(newsy orchestral music) - Governor Ron DeSantis this week proposed a bill to penalize social media companies for blocking politicians, even if those politicians incite violence.

- If they engage in wrong things or they go to the wrong political event, then all of a sudden, they can act in concert and just take you off.

You need to have protection against that.

- Ciara Torres-Spelliscy is a professor at Stetson University College of Law.

She teaches constitutional law and the First Amendment and she's an author and a fellow at the Brennan Center.

Professor, thanks for joining us.

Great to see you.

- Thanks for having me back.

- I think the governor's characterizing what the social media companies are doing and I think a lot of conservatives feel this way that they're being censored by social media.

Is that the way you see what's happening?

- It is not in part because I look at this through the lens of the First Amendment.

The First Amendment protects private individuals and private companies from the government, not the other way around.

So, Facebook and Twitter have the constitutional rights to edit what is found on their platforms, including deplatforming individuals.

- But shouldn't the social media companies just accept everything out there just like the telephone company does and just say, okay, we're the telephone company and we're providing the service and everybody can transmit over our service.

- No, they are not treated exactly like a common carrier.

So, if the law treated them precisely like a common carrier, then you would be right, that they would have to take every person who wants to be on Facebook or every person who wants to be on Twitter, then those platforms would have to accept that.

I think the analysis that courts are coming to is that Twitter and Facebook are more akin to a newspaper.

And with a newspaper, the editor of the newspaper gets to edit content.

You don't have a right to have your op-ed or your letter to the editor published.

Ultimately, it's the choice of that private publisher who decides whether certain content comes onto that platform.

And similarly, Facebook, if it wants to deplatform you or Twitter if it wants to deplatform you because you've been saying things that are dangerous or incendiary, they can edit that in a way that the government cannot.

And so, I think the proposals from the Florida legislature and from the Florida governor are problematic because the First Amendment surely applies to them and they can't sensor Facebook and Twitter.

- And you think that's what they're doing by requiring Facebook and Twitter to accept content that they normally would not or tell us what you mean by that.

- So, there's a doctrine in First Amendment jurisprudence called the compelled speech doctrine and this allows individuals to remain silent if that's the message that they would like to convey.

And the Supreme Court has upheld this in several cases from Jehovah's Witness children who didn't want to say the Pledge of Allegiance because that was against their religion.

The court sided with the children.

There was a man in New Hampshire who didn't want live free or die on his license plate and the Supreme Court sided with him over the state of New Hampshire.

And more recently, there was a fight over the St. Patrick's day parade in Boston.

This was several years back, but at the time, they wouldn't let gay members of the community march in the parade.

And that was litigated to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court said the organizers of the parade have a right to remain silent.

If they don't want a gay message in their parade, they don't have to have a gay message in their parade because there's a speech right for the people who organize the parade.

Now, Boston can't discriminate between the gay pride parade and the St. Patrick's Day parade, but the St. Patrick's Day parade organizers can discriminate because they are a private entity.

- And in this case, Twitter and Facebook are private entities and they have the right to remain silent.

- They do.

So, if they don't want to carry a certain type of political speech or really any type of speech, they can silence that speech.

And I'm not saying that it's not frightening that a few concentrated corporations have the ability to deplatform the president, which is what happened a couple of weeks ago to former president Trump, that is sort of a crazy amount of power for a few corporations to have, but it's a power that they have pursuant to the constitution and to the First Amendment.

- Do you know of cases, I mean, the social media companies are saying we are not banning speech because of the content if it's simply calling for a tax decrease, we're banning speech because somebody's saying the election was stolen or they're showing images of violence or potential violence.

So, that's what they say, but do you know if people are actually being barred from Facebook or Twitter because they simply have a conservative message?

- I don't work for either of these companies.

And so, I can't speak to what's being deplatformed unless it's been reported in the press.

So obviously, the president was deplatformed and it was a huge change because he had so many followers on Twitter for example and he was sort of a constant source of information and some might say disinformation during the election season.

And I think once we got to the insurrection in January 6th, that's when Twitter had finally had enough and they decided that's it, you're off of our platform, you have been spreading misinformation and encouraging, I think in Twitter's mind, violence, which is not acceptable.

- All right, well, Professor Torres-Spelliscy, thanks a lot for coming on "Florida This Week".

Nice to have you here.

- Thank you for having me.

(newsy orchestral music) - Well, the violence in Washington DC caused some companies to think twice before giving donations to lawmakers who voted against certifying Joe Biden's electoral victory, but others didn't pause in their contributions.

Steve Contorno is the political editor at the "Tampa Bay Times".

In addition to reporting, he also writes "The Buzz on Florida Politics".

He joins us now, hey, Steve, welcome back.

Good to see you.

- Thanks, Rob.

- So, Florida does have a lot of politicians who didn't think that Donald Trump lost the election, in some cases have voted not to certify in Washington.

And, even in Florida, we've got the attorney general and others that kinda dismissed the November election results.

Are corporations still giving to those politicians in the wake of the insurrection at the Capitol?

- So, dozens of corporations have said that they are rethinking their contributions as a result of what happened on January 6th.

The question is how far reaching their new policies will be and whether it will extend to Florida politicians.

We have, like you said, Ashley Moody who supported the lawsuit to overturn the election.

We have the governor who was among the first to suggest that legislatures should overturn the results of the election.

We have Senator Gruters who is the head of the Republican party of Florida who was tweeting stop the steal.

And the question is, will these acts be construed by these companies as being part of the lead up and the rhetoric that influenced this insurrection?

And right now, we don't know the answer to it, but it would be significant if they pulled back.

We did an analysis that showed that the companies who have so far announced some sort of change in their policy have donated $79 million to Florida campaigns and candidates over the last decade.

These are big corporations with large influence in Florida, such as Disney, Duke Energy, Comcast, AT&T, Walmart.

So, if they were to change their policy going forward, it would be significant, but a lot of them have said that they're specifically focusing on the lawmakers who voted to decertify the election.

Others have said, like Duke Energy, that their policy change for now only applies to federal election donations while others like Microsoft have said that they're doing a wholesale reevaluation and it potentially could affect Florida state level politicians going forward.

- So, I guess we'll have to wait and see how much they pull back, how long that pause is.

I wanna ask you another question that is there was all this talk this week that the Congressman Charlie Crist, the former Republican governor now a democratic Congressman from Pinellas County, is open to the idea of running for governor again.

What can you tell us about this?

- This is a rumor that I've heard percolating in the background for a couple months now.

And the Democrats are looking for someone who could take on Ron DeSantis.

And I think there are some people who are trying to convince Charlie or he's trying to convince maybe that he can be sort of a Joe Biden-like candidate in Florida, someone who is middle of the road, familiar face, who can take on someone who is very close in policy and in personal to Donald Trump.

Now, there are also people who are saying it's time for the party to look for new faces.

And while Charlie may be considering getting back into the game, there's a whole bunch of other candidates who are also weighing whether or not to run.

And I think you're gonna see a lot of the same arguments that we saw during the Democratic primary where people are saying it's time for some new blood or a more progressive voice or someone who can unite the left and the middle of the party.

But it'll be interesting to see if Charlie does get into the race.

He certainly sounds like he's entertaining the idea.

- It's interesting that you link him up with President Biden.

One last question, Crist just went through a reelection, then he won, but he won narrowly.

Now, we've got the redistricting coming up in Tallahassee.

What's likely to happen to Charlie Crist's congressional seat in terms of the Democratic-Republican breakdown.

- Well, if you remember, that seat was the one that became basically the poster child for the redistricting lawsuit because the way that Republicans drew it the last time there was the redistricting process is that it jumped the Bay and that was seen as an example of a district that did not meet the constitutional standards that have been set, but it's a whole new Supreme Court with a much more conservative Supreme Court that's been shaped by DeSantis.

Republicans are still in charge of that process in Tallahassee.

So, it'll be interesting to see if they find ways to make that district more conservative.

But we also have right to the North of the district is Gus Bilirakis's seat and that's a district that he's been successful in because he's well-known in that area, but that area is also becoming a larger and is picking up some of the blue growth that we're seeing in St. Pete and other parts of Pinellas.

So, they might choose to shore up that district and leave the St. Pete seat as more of a bluer seat going forward.

- Well, Steve, thanks for coming back on the show.

It's nice to have you here.

- Thanks as always, Rob.

(newsy orchestral music) - The Super Bowl is this Sunday and the hometown Tampa Bay Buccaneers are in the game.

It comes in a year when all of Tampa Bay's major league sports teams have competed for championships.

John Romano is a sports columnist for the "Tampa Bay Times" and has been covering the teams in this rare year for success.

Welcome back, John, great to see you.

- Good to see you, Rob.

- So how rare is it for three teams in a city to make the championship in a single season?

- Well, it's incredibly rare nationally and especially in this situation where you're talking about the Tampa Bay market is a mid market in terms of sports franchises.

If you have a New York, a Boston or Los Angeles, there are occasional years where they'll have two, maybe even three teams playing for championships.

For a team like or an area like Tampa Bay to do it, it's remarkably rare.

This is an area where these three teams hadn't even made the playoffs in the same season before this year.

And now, we have all three of them playing for championships in a span of about five months.

- So, do you believe that defense wins games like this, wins the Super Bowl?

- Well, defense, that used to be the buzz phrase for years and years and years.

The NFL over the past decade has become much more of an offensive league.

It's actually funny, the final four teams in the NFL playoffs this year, the Bucs were the only one that had a top 10 defense.

So now, it's how many points can you put on the board?

But I think you're onto something there because I think Tampa Bay's defense, Bruce Arians is our coach, has been saying it all year, that they've been winning with defense, even though they give up a lot of points a game, it's still not as much as what you're seeing around the rest of the NFL.

- And back in the middle of the season, back in the part of the season when the Bucs were seven and five, this didn't look possible, did it?

- No, they got off to a slow start and it was somewhat explainable because obviously, everybody knows Tom Brady came here this year and with the pandemic, they didn't have a normal training camp, off-season camp.

They didn't have any kind of pre-season.

So, it just took a little while for Brady to get together with the receivers, to totally understand the offense that Bruce Arians wanted to run and I think once they got deep into the season, they got a bi-week early in December which gave him a little more time to work.

After that bi-week, they came out like gangbusters and haven't lost since.

- So earlier this week, you predicted Kansas City would win.

Are you standing by that?

- I actually, in my heart, when I made that prediction in print, I thought Kansas City would win.

But as the week has gone on, I've become more and more convinced listening to the Tampa Bay players that they have a legitimate shot at winning this thing.

I wouldn't make a very good gambler, would I?

I just keep going back and forth.

- You have to bet on both sides.

So, sports has this ability, at least when I think when I was growing up, when you were growing up, it had this ability to bring the country together.

I think we all watch the Olympics, we watch the World Series.

Super Bowl parties go back 55 or 54 years.

So, what about this year?

I mean, there's so much tension in the country.

Do you think that, having the oldest quarterback ever to compete or is he the oldest quarterback ever to compete, do you think that there's a chance that this game can reduce some of that tension that's in the country?

- Well, I think that's the romantic notion of sports, that it somehow gives us all something to have a root and interest for.

And I do think it's been sort of a double-edged sword here in Tampa Bay that we've had this greatest season ever of success for the three major league sports franchises and it's come in a year when we weren't able to attend many of the games.

The Race World Series games were played in Texas, the Lightning Stanley Cup playoffs, the entire playoffs was done in Canada.

So, from that sense, it's been sort of sad for Tampa Bay not to be able to participate the way we would like to, but I do think it has given the market something to root for it, given us a distraction.

It's given us reasons to communicate again for a lot of people who are stuck at home and not going to school or work like they normally do.

So, I do think it's been a huge way to bond, if not a way to heal over the past year.

- John, it's great to see you and I'll be glued to my TV on Sunday evening.

Great to see you.

- You too, Rob, take care.

(newsy orchestral music) - Thanks for watching.

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(newsy orchestral music) - [Announcer] "Florida This Week" is a production of WEDU who is solely responsible for its content.