The Stuart News functions as the “paper of record” for Martin County. Clearly, they consider that status a business asset. Unfortunately, as they demonstrated in a Jan. 14 editorial, “Should governor intervene in Martin County?”, the paper does not place equal value on their journalistic responsibility to provide readers with an impartial source of local news.
Not content with reporting news, the paper seeks to shape the news by calling on the governor to suspend and replace Commissioners Ed Fielding and Sarah Heard.
Hoping to cover partisanship with a fig leaf of concern, the unsigned editorial suggests that “the interim replacements for these ‘slow-growth’ commissioners should mirror their political philosophy.” Ironically, the person who the paper wishes would exercise that discretion is the subject of an adjacent column by Eve Samples, “The greenwashing of Gov. Rick Scott.”
Recent reporting and editorials on the subject appearing in this paper have failed to provide the context of two commissioners who accepted campaign contributions from the plaintiffs, voted in favor of the Lake Point settlement, and who apparently were not subjected to the same kind of scrutiny of their private email accounts and public records custody practices.
Making the case for removal, the paper offers the suspension of Chris Dzadovsky in St. Lucie County as a precedent. They fail to mention that Dzadovsky was charged with a felony and was reinstated after the charge was reduced to a misdemeanor. Heard and Fielding are charged with misdemeanors.
The editorial notes that the legal drama surrounding the Lake Point case has become “a major distraction” and that “This is getting real old. Martin County needs to move beyond Lake Point.” Neither shoddy journalism nor a preemptive suspension of commissioners who have not had their day in court will accomplish that goal.
David Cross, Stuart