"Coverups never work." Senator Howard Henry Baker, Jr., during Watergate
Ten years ago, the Record refused for multiple months to cover the City's dumping a landfill in a lake, even after the State of Florida sent a Notice of Violation. I broke the story in print, in The Collective Press (St. Augustine) and my column in Out in the City (Jacksonville).
The Record finally got around to covering it, even though it perpetually referred to the Old City Reservoir as "a water-filled borrow pit" -- in the words of former EPA Regional Administrator John Henry Hankinson, it was "an open sore going straight down to the aquifer and the groundwater. And when the City burghers and FDEP cooked up a deal to move the 2000 truckloads of contaminated solid waste back to Lincolnville, the Record supported them. We, the People stopped them. The contaminated solid waste is now in Nassau County landfill.
The Record refuses to report that Sheriff DAVID SHOAR is under FBI investigation? Why? that
The Record refuses to report that Sheriff SHOAR has been sued by Rick Sheldon for wrongful death and civil rigths violations in the shooting of his wife. Why?
The Record refuses to report that the Sheriff's false, malicious charges of trespassing against Jeffrey Marcus Gray (carrying a picket sign on a sidewalk) were dismissed on April 25th by the State's Atorney's office? Why?
In bed with Sheriff SHOAR?
Too much ca$h from developers and government agencies?
The Record for a week has refused to report that all charges against activist-videographer-journalist Jeffrey Marcus Gray have been dropped?
Why?
You tell me.
why? the answer is simple. newspapers long ago were used as vehicles for advertising. If you stir the pot too much, then businesses will be reluctant to put their brand in it. Tourism First, unrestricted commercial/Residential Development second, everyone else be damned.
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