In secret, behind locked gates, our Nation's Oldest City dumped a landfill in a lake (Old City Reservoir), while emitting sewage in our rivers and salt marsh. Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome!
Friday, May 08, 2009
EDGAR BERGEN, CHARLIE McCARTHY, PRAVDA, ISVESTIA, and MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS' ST. AUGUSTINE WRecKord
When in the course of human events there's a newspaper so other-directed, underfunded and poorly written that it won't even reflect more than one point of view, we compare it to PRAVDA and ISVESTIA in the former Soviet Union , it in a news story about an effort to revive a rejected development that would destroy city-owned bottomlands, it is an embarrassment to every single MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS employee, contractor, investor and bondholder. See St. Augustine WRecKord story on Fish Island proposal, below.
The story below is written by "Staff," which most often means a press release.
There are tell-tale signs that it is a press release from a member of the "Ignorant Tightass Society" (in the phrase of The West Wing presidential character Jed Bartlett, about a Dr. Laura lookalike).
The only quotations are from City Attorney RONALD WAYNE BROWN and "FISH ISLAND LLC LLC," as if a soulless corporation could speak for itself, without human intervention. That's carrying the U.S. Supreme Court's Santa Clara County case a bit far -- every corporation we've ever encountered was mute, and required PR people to speak for it -- people with names. Evidently, City Attorney (and former PIERRE THOMPSON mouthpiece) RONALD WAYNE BROWN might be speaking for "FISH ISLAND LLC" as well as for the City of St. Augustine
Not one bit of effort is said to have been made to contact the courageous citizens (including Bill Hamilton and Ken Bryan), who saved the beautiful marshes by the SR 312 bridge. How crude an example of biased journalism.
Obviously showing favoritism for THOMPSON BROTHERS REALTY (big WrecKord advertiser, convicted Migratory Bird Treaty Act violator), owned by the St. Augustine REcord founder's grandson, PIERRE THOMPSON, the WRecKord once again couldn't bestir itself to gather news. It let its readers down again.
MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS' WRecKord intentionally tried to propagandize for the City when it printed an unilluminating, unattributed, uninteresting press release written by the City's overpaid $500,000/year PR department, superintended by City Manager WILLIAM B. HARIRS' heybody PAUL WILLIAMSON, the most dour PR man I've ever seen frowning at citizen-activists.
Who, what, where, when, why and how -- remember the five Ws and the H?
Who among the Commissioners was negotiating, with what authority, with whom?
As Wordsworth would say, "they have given our hearts away, a sordid boon."
Who was present in the negotiation meetings? Was there a court reporter?
What were they doing selling our city--owned bottomlands down the river?
What authority were they given and by whom?
When were the meetings held?
Where were the meetings held?
Where were the negotiators going to allow what?
How were the negotiators going to con the public?
Were they planning on pulling a fast one, as WILLIAM B. HARRISS, RONALD WAYNE BROWN and their crew always do?
What do you reckon?
MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS' St. Augustine WRecKord once again shows that its news coverage of anything related to the City of St. Augustine and its supercilious City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS and City Attorney RONALD WAYNE BROWN is below the standard and behind the times -- not so much news coverage as a coverup.
So who is Edgar Bergen and who is Charlie McCarthy?
Journalistic malpractice?
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