Hypocritical Stuart Newspaper Lapping up the Sugar Money Again

Stuart-based Treasure Coast Newspapers -- the media group that shallacks anyone and everyone who comes within a mile of Big Sugar money -- is out there again ... need I say it? ... taking sugar money.

For the second time in less than three weeks, Clewiston-based U.S. Sugar Corp. ran a full-page ad in TCPalm's prime Sunday edition, which always records the largest circulation of the week. Maybe you saw it. If not, we're happy to reproduce it for you.

How can you blame U.S. Sugar? As I said previously, this is a newspaper that spent the last two years trashing it.

It must be tricky for editors to explain to Stuart readers why 1) the newspaper speaks out of both sides of its mouth and 2) why U.S. Sugar had a positive story the newspaper never thought was worth telling, but had to pay to get the message out.

Some might say the first makes the newspaper a hypocrite and the second makes its objectivity and sense of fair play a bridge too far. 

The ad was prominently displayed in the paper's A-section.

On June 11 the newspaper group shocked many of its readers when it 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 Sunshine State News.

Treasure Coast Publisher Bob Brunjes said he'd had no complaints.