Saturday, March 07, 2015

Bad News Judgment I

Original sin in news in St. Johns County is the fact that, 4.5 years after Michelle O'Connell was shot to death, the St. Augustine Record is still dancing to the music of Sheriff Shoar's propaganda.
On February 13, 2015, United States District Judge Brian Davis dismissed Deputy JEREMY BANKS' retaliatory complaint against FDLE investigator on a (12)(b)(6) motion for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.
On March 5, 2015, JEREMY BANKS filed an amended complaint. This one reads like a lawyer drafted it, or at least someone who had a passing acquaintance with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
Filed before The New York Times and PBS Frontline stories in November 2013, the original complaint, with its weird warped whiny kvetchiness, reads like a paranoid fantasy of Sheriff DAVID BERNARD SHOAR. It was dismissed February 13, 2015 for lacking any good faith basis or "plausibility."
The Michelle O'Connell shooting coverup has been covered by Folio Weekly, First Coast News, The New York Times, PBS Frontline, Dateline NBC, Good Morning America, Dr. Phil, the Guardian, Historic City News, and this blog, among others.
The Record, reeling under pressure from its government news sources and advertisers, has priggishly refused to investigate.
Wonder why?
Dismissal of JEREMY BANKS' frivolous complaint against FDLE and Agent Rusty Ray Rodgers was reported by Folio Weekly, HCN and this blog.
But not by the Record at all.
Wonder why?
Meanwhile, the Record ran a petty pejorative article in 2013, interviewing Timesman Walt Bogdanich and accusing him of "parachuting in" to St. Augustine, with a headline that he had "no regrets" about his "not making friends" in the Sheriff's Department.
What authoritarian rubbish.
For empowering a corrupt political machine the Record deserves our forgiveness.
Straighten up and fly right, Record.
Now.
BUT for printing nothing but PR fluff from the Sheriff since September 2, 2010 -- starting with a story that did not contain the name of either Michelle O'Connell or Jeremy Banks and purported "suicide" -- the St. Augustine Record deserves a booby prize.


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