Can you spell h-y-p-o-c-r-i-t-e? Here's a closer look at one: The Treasure Coast newspaper group that spent more than a year dogging lobbyist Ken Pruitt like a bloodhound at a crime scene for taking a sugar company's money ... well, how can I put this? ... climbed into bed with a sugar company.
Climbed right in. All the way under the covers -- Treasure Coast Newspapers and U.S. Sugar Corp. (USSC). And they're going to be snuggling up for some time.
On Thursday the newspaper ran a full-page U.S. Sugar ad, cost not disclosed -- "one of a series of 10 or 12 such ads," USSC spokesperson Judy Sanchez told me.
When asked why the company was advertising in a newspaper that spent the last year trashing it, Sanchez said, "The Treasure Coast community has only heard about us, now they're going to meet us. We wanted to tell the story no media outlet on the Treasure Coast ever told. This is who we are."
But, wait! Why would this daily newspaper group make such a deal with Big Sugar? Isn't sugar money dirty?
On June 19, 2013, the paper certainly thought so. It ran an editorial headlined, "Treasure Coast lawmakers should reject cash from Big Sugar." In the first paragraph it asked, "Which Treasure Coast lawmaker will be the first to set an example and decline campaign contributions from Big Sugar? Or will they all continue to rake in cash from the deep-pocketed industry while professing that money doesn’t affect how they vote in the Florida Legislature?"
That editorial was printed at a time when I was wondering which newspaper would be the first in Florida to decline a Big Sugar ad? Oops, I guess not Treasure Coast Newspapers.
Confuscious say, Big Sugar cash bad for you, good for me.
Certainly sugar money was dirty when Ken Pruitt, former Senate president and now St. Lucie County property appraiser, signed on to include Florida Crystals as one of his 16 lobbying clients. Treasure Coast editors launched a year-long attempt to humiliate and discredit perhaps the most accomplished state lawmaker ever to represent the Treasure Coast by running the daily "Pruitt Meter" -- a mug shot of Pruitt at the top of the Opinion Page, with a number that counted the days he refused to discuss whether he would keep his "lucrative lobbying business" or give it up and be a full-time county property appraiser. Pruitt's decision to take on a sugar client was at the heart of the campaign.
(Oh, and as an aside, under Pruitt's leadership, the St. Lucie Property Appraiser's Office was awarded the 2014 International Association of Assessing Officers' "Distinguished Assessment Jurisdiction Award," a recognition given to only one office out of 7,000 in the world. It wasn't long after that that the newspaper took the Pruitt Meter down.)
I asked Treasure Coast Publisher Bob Brunjes Thursday if he didn't consider the U.S. Sugar full-page ad as a conflict of interest, considering editors had made sugar the bad guy almost on a daily basis for the last two years, and in a sense, part of its franchise. "I haven't talked to Mark (Executive Editor Mark Tomasik) about it," said Brunjes, who previously was the paper's advertising director. "People mentioned it today at a (Martin County) Economic Council luncheon, but so far, nobody has come charging into my office to complain." He suggested I talk with Tomasik.
Did Tomasik think accepting an ad from the enemy was hypocritical? "The news side and the revenue side are independent of each other," he said. "We have a long tradition of always making sure we don't cross that line."
But, hold on ... Isn't that the same argument legislators have used -- fundraising has nothing to do with policy?
Treasure Coast Newspapers readers who called told Sunshine State News the USSC ad in their crusading local newspaper took them by surprise.
"Wow, that's a pretty large peacepipe, an ad like that," said Robbie Brown from Palm City. "In the end I guess it's all about money."
Barbara Clowdus, editor of Martin County Currents, said, "I could hardly believe it when I saw the ad, and the size of it. I was hounded mercilessly for taking three ads from a sugar company a couple years ago, so I didn't take any more. I see now I should have invited them back."
Treasure Coast Newspapers and the Everglades Trust/Foundation/Coalition have been joined at the hip since the devastating rainy summer of 2013, when fresh water from Lake Okeechobee and feeder canals gushed into the St. Lucie estuary and Indian River Lagoon, bringing a plethora of pollutants.
I have to ask myself, will the Everglades environmental groups now target their buddy the newspaper, a study in hypocrisy, with the same kind of attack mailer it aimed at state Reps. Kristin Jacobs, Katie Edwards and Heather Fitzenhagen? More about the mailer next time I write. In the meantime, be reminded -- hypocrisy is all around us, it's everywhere, it's the foul air we breathe when we look across at the next pasture.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith. In full disclosure: Nancy Smith worked for Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers as reporter, city editor, managing editor and associate editor for 28 years. She left the paper in January 2005.
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Same Jay Honan I remember. My