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Inside the S.P. Times - A Freedom Magazine Special Report
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EDITORIAL
To Tell the Truth
How much is the St. Petersburg Times Worth?
How much is the St. Petersburg Times worth?
Answer No. 1—$28 million, when you’re trying to look poor so a jury will go easy on you.
Facing a jury trial in a libel suit in August [see “$10 Million Libel Verdict Against the St. Petersburg Times,”], Times attorneys told the court the Times net worth was only $28 million. They then maneuvered a stipulation to this effect, apparently hoping to lessen the judgment amount.
Big Pay at Poynter
In May 2008, the St. Petersburg Times offered an “enhanced retirement option” to encourage senior staff to leave, and at the same time froze wages of those who stayed. Announcing the desperate move, Times Publishing Chief Executive Paul Tash said the cuts were due to a “difficult economic climate” caused by dwindling ad revenues.
In September 2009, Tash issued a memo to Times staff announcing more bad news: “First, we will implement a 5 percent, across-the-board wage reduction for all employees, starting November 2.”
Case Study: A Sheriff ruined
The St. Petersburg Times attack on former Pasco County Sheriff John Short is legendary. The Times published a series of articles in 1983 that led to his 1984 indictment on corruption charges and loss of his job and his career. Aiming for a Pulitzer, in 1983 Lucy Morgan and Jack Reed of the Times churned out scores of sensational stories about Short and his deputy, John Moorman, with screaming headlines.
Case Study: A Tribe defamed
The St. Petersburg Times evidently underestimated its target when it went after the Seminole tribe in 1997. Before the paper succeeded in publishing anything on the tribe and its leadership, the Seminole Tribune scored with its own investigative feature on the Times’ unethical practices.
Case Study: For Falsely Reporting With Malice: $10 Million Libel Verdict against St. Petersburg Times
The allegations were serious. The defendant was ultimately awarded $10 million, to be collected from Times Publishing Co. as compensation and as a penalty for the St. Petersburg Times’ false reporting with malice. But the newspaper—which normally feasts on such stories—gave the scantest of coverage to its own trial and the subsequent verdict.
Journalism with an Agenda
When the St. Petersburg Times was slapped in August 2009 with one of the largest libel judgments against any media organization in the past decade, it was not the first time the newspaper’s “hit list” mentality reporting had damaged a local individual or group. Decades before Dr. Harold Kennedy was defamed, Pasco County Sheriff John Short and the Seminole Tribe suffered at the hands of Times reporters.
Hypocrisy Exposed
Since before Poynter Institute for Media Studies opened its storefront-office doors in 1975 under the name Modern Media Institute, Florida law has required all nonprofit charitable organizations that solicit donations from the public to register with the state. When that law was weakened in 1989, the St. Petersburg Times loudly campaigned to put the teeth back into it. In 1992, the stronger Solicitation of Contributions Act became law in Florida.
Steal, Bribe and Spy
by Adolfo Pesquera and Ben Shaw
Switch -Up, Switch-Down
>> Switch-Up, Switch-Down
June 2, 2009:
Three business days have passed since the meeting on May 28, and Childs now telephones with a cordial follow-up to a Davis and Yingling offer to supply documents cited in the meeting of May 28.
Childs proceeds to list what he refers to as the "primary documents of interest."
Most particularly:
