Showing posts with label Dana Banker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dana Banker. Show all posts

Monday, June 17, 2013

Emmy-award investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News is ‘Outraged’ about her work and personal computers being hacked, but most Mainstream Media have ignored or are STILL ignoring the story, with South Florida media preferring to post their customary flotsam & jetsam that the public is increasingly rejecting


CBS News investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson is ‘Outraged’ about her work and personal computers being hacked, but most Mainstream Media have or still are ignoring the story, with South Florida media preferring instead to post their customary flotsam & jetsam that the public is increasingly rejecting
POLITICO
Attkisson: 'Outraged' by computer hacking
By Mackenzie Weinger
June 17, 2013  12:47 PM EDT
CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson on Monday said she is “outraged” her computer was hacked and called it “a very serious and disturbing matter.”
Attkisson told “CBS This Morning” she reported her concern that her work and personal computers were being compromised to CBS News management in January, and they hired a cyber security firm to conduct an investigation. CBS News on Friday said Attkisson’s computer had been compromised and accessed “by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions” in late 2012.

The very troubling situating with Emmy-award winning investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson's computer has been completely ignored at Forbes.com and their Forbes Network Activity blogs which I subscribe to, a group that writes about everything under the sun, as well as by ProPublica and the supposedly media-savvy New York magazine, as the screen grab below from around 4:35 pm today shows.
Not even one.

Compare that to all the blog posts they have run the past year on alleged phone hacking by NewsCorp execs that actually happened in -yes- another country.
Yes, as far as they are concerned, it's very much a case of picking-and-choosing whose ox is to be gored.
But why would they ignore the story completely?
That's who they are.



Locally, the multi-month story which was first given attention by POLITICO's media columnist  Dylan Byers on May 21st 
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/05/sharyl-attkissons-computers-compromised-164456.html
was completely ignored until last Friday by the Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, with genius editors at the Sun-Sentinel choosing to weigh-in with a weighty four-sentence report from Reuters.

Typical for the Sun-Sentinel the past few years under editor Dana Banker, they were both completely oblivious of the story and then after everyone else who has been ignoring the story finally went with it, they actually ran the worst-possible thing.
Four sentences.
That's why it's the Sun-Sentinel!

Nobody seriously expects real feats of journalism from them anymore.

More noteworthy is that the local CBS affiliate here in Miami, WFOR-TV, which has seen its news rating falter, is also completely ignoring the story thus far:
http://miami.cbslocal.com/search/?q=%22Sharyl+Attkisson%22

Monday, June 10, 2013

Don't say it with flowers, say it with subpoenas! Subpoenas finally drop on the heads of Hallandale Beach officials, including Mayor Joy Cooper, and now the Joint Legislative Auditing Comm. is showing genuine interest in getting the WHOLE TRUTH from the HB CRA about what happened to all that money. Yes, the scandal in Broward County involving MILLION$ that the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and their Dana Banker & Rosemary Goudreau have been ignoring for months. Future owners of the Sun-Sentinel, please take note!

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player

Local10 video: Hallandale Beach CRA accused of misspending $2.1 Million
Broward County Commission takes no action on audit request.
Reported by investigative reporter Bob Norman
Published On: Jun 04 2013 07:11:25 PM EDT, Updated On: Jun 05 2013 11:01:19 AM EDT

http://www.local10.com/news/cra-accused-of-misspending-21m/-/1717324/20425002/-/3mpae4z/-/index.html
My comments after the article. 
-----
Broward Bulldog
Legislature asks Hallandale for answers about CRA spending; Subpoenas land at city hall
By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org  
June 10, 2013 AT 6:15 AM
The Florida Legislature’s joint auditing committee is wading into Hallandale Beach’s questionable spending of local redevelopment funds, demanding that city officials explain the use and handling of those funds.
Legislators who head the committee also are urging the city commission to ask Florida’s Attorney General for a new opinion to clarify how Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) funds can be spent. City leaders have challenged a previous opinion.
Read the rest of the article at:

While all you regular readers of the blog know by now that I've written FL state Senator Jeremy Ring about the HB CRA scandal before, perhaps some of those fact-filled emails I also sent to the fair-minded state legislators on the Florida Joint Legislative Auditing Committee and certain members of the FL House and Senate leadership who still genuinely care about public accountability and the public good, emails that I've never mentioned before, have finally worn away their natural skepticism that things here in Hallandale Beach at the CRA could really be as bad as we all knew they were in fact.
Nothing like having the facts on your side in an argument, and we've all collectively had facts by the mountain-lode from the very beginning.

HB City Hall, on the other hand, had it much easier.
There, highly-paid city employees only had their never-ending desire to keep Mayor Cooper and her Rubber Stamp Crew happy, and spending money where she wanted it spent, without having those pesky problems of caring what actually happened to the money or even whether it was spent the way it was supposed to, albeit, for impermissible purposes.
Finally, a few rays of sunshine...

This afternoon, former Hallandale Beach Commissioner Keith London, a friend, sent the following comments out over the transom, and I thought they were worth your attention.


 

Everyone,

Last week Commissioner Michele Lazarow and I spoke to the Broward County Commission regarding the “Gross Mismanagement” by Hallandale Beach of its CRA.

On Friday I received a copy of the letter from the Florida Legislature Joint Legislative Committee demanding specific action(s) by the city of Hallandale as outlined in the Broward Office of the Inspector General official report title “Gross Mismanagement”.

As a “concerned citizen” I also spoke with the Florida Auditor General’s office and requested they perform a complete audit of Hallandale CRA under Florida Statue Chapter 163. I was pleased to see their office was copied by the Florida Legislature Joint Legislative Committee letter on Friday.

In addition, the State Attorney’s office has issued subpoenas to the city of and at least one elected Hallandale Commission member seeking documentation into the “criminal investigation” of Deborah Brown.

The above information is vastly different than the story Cooper portrays in her writings in the Sun Times last Thursday (the newspaper which receives $50,000 annually from the City and a CRA grant of $25,000) – click here.

The State Attorney’s Office, Florida Legislature Joint Legislative Committee, Florida Auditor General, Broward Office of the Inspector General, and The Broward County Commission will surely enjoy reading the rants of denial in her article while the investigation continues. 
-----
* I'll have a video posted here very soon of the comments that Keith and HB City Commissioner Michele Lazarow made last Tuesday before the Broward County Commission so that you can hear them for yourself.

Officially, those photos that I sent some of you by email last Tuesday afternoon of Keith London and Mayor Joy Cooper at the Broward County Comm. meeting ran at the Broward Politics blog, so if you were to go to the Sun-Sentinel's website, they don't appear in search results.

Here's the link to the reader comments to the strange S-S photo gallery of Tuesday, the one that incorrectly implied that Mayor Cooper would speak, which if the Sun-Sentinel's Tonya Alanez had simply read the agenda docs, she'd know that was NOT going to happen.
Not that they went back to correct that, after-the-fact, as would happen at most newspapers!

And where's any mention of what was actually said about the HB CRA at that meeting, either in the morning or later in the afternoon on Tuesday?
There is NONE.

If you want more proof of the Sun-Sentinel's obliviousness to this story, consider this.
If you do a search on the S-S website itself, there's nothing on their website about the HB CRA scandal or what Keith London or Comm. Michele Lazarow have said about it, whether last Tuesday or in the past few months, even though it's clearly news.
0 results for ‘"Hallandale Beach CRA"’. Showing 0 results for"Hallandale Beach CRA".
Sort by: Relevance | Date
No Results Found
So, obviously, there's also no high-minded editorials from them about the HB CRA scandals and HB City Hall's longstanding lack of ethics.
LOL!

In fact, what Michele actually says or does or thinks about any issue of any kind at HB City Hall has never caught the attention of the S-S since her election in November.
Nothing about a single issue in 7 months according to their own records!

Yes, despite everything that has happened here over those same seven months.

Your first reaction upon hearing this likely to shake your head and say 
"How in the year 2013 can that be true?"
There's your local news coverage, Sun-Sentinel style.

Some well-informed people around Broward have been suggesting something to me for many months and now I'm officially going to share this bit of groupthink with you, though that was before I started hearing last week that subpoenas were on the way:

They believe that Sun-Sentinel columnist Michael Mayo has thrown in the towel on HB and is no longer going to get exorcised by what  happens here, since he believes that the Broward State Attorney's Office doesn't want to do their job and neither does FL Attorney General Pam Bondi's office, either.

They further believe that Mayo sees writing a column about HB, like he once did fairly frequently for a few years, as a losing proposition, and that he no longer thinks it's worth the time or effort because nobody cares what happens here.
In that respect, he'd just be like News4, NBC6 and 7News, who have been invisible on this story.

* Attention future owners of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:
Here's your snapshot of newsroom editor Dana Banker's commitment to fair-minded local news coverage as viewed thru the prism of someone who lives in my city and who is well-informed -nothing.
And let's not forget Rosemary Goudreau, the editorial page editor under whose leadership nothing about the HB CRA scandal has ever appeared in print.
You know, in case facts matter.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

My fact-filled email to a Sun-Sentinel reporter sheds long-overdue light on the behavior of both Florida state Sen. Eleanor Sobel and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel's sloppy and incurious brand of journalism, and how both negatively affect Broward residents; After today, I give up on the Sun-Sentinel until the Tribune Co. sell it off to someone savvy enough to give beleaguered Broward residents the quality newspaper they deserve, not more of the same old unsatisfactory status quo that is so galling

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel's vending machine outside Hollywood City Hall

My fact-filled email to a Sun-Sentinel reporter sheds long-overdue light on the behavior of both Florida state Sen. Eleanor Sobel and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel's sloppy and incurious brand of journalism, and how both negatively affect Broward residents; After today, I give up on the Sun-Sentinel until the Tribune Co. sell it off to someone savvy enough to give beleaguered Broward residents the quality newspaper they deserve, not more of the same old unsatisfactory status quo that is so galling
What follows is a copy of an overdue email that I sent Friday afternoon to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Specifically, Tallahassee-based reporter Kathleen Haughney, with cc's to Dana Barker, the Sun-Sentinel Broward metro editor, Rosemary Goudreau, their Editorial page editor, Douglas Lyons, senior editorial writer and columnist, and columnist Gary Stein.
Also receiving it was columnist Michael Mayo and reporter Susannah Bryan, who currently has Hallandale Beach and Hollywood as part of her beat.

I've been waiting, semi-patiently, since Tuesday afternoon to send it off, get it out of my system and finally cross it off of my long list of Draft emails that are going to be dropping around South Florida like little mini-explosions over the next few weeks.

Mostly, though, I waited to see if someone else in Broward County noticed any of the same curious and troubling things that I caught right away when I saw the article shortly after it went online Monday night.
As I fully expected, nope!

For those of you who know a little more about the history of the incidents that are discussed herein, it's my effort to convincingly connect a lot of the missing dots that I've not mentioned here on the blog previously over the past few years about the behavior and conduct of Florida state Senator Eleanor Sobel, the real way way the Broward County PBA tries to exert its influence politically in Hollywood, and adds yet more fuel -and specifics- to the roaring that is the insufferably poor job that the the Sun-Sentinel has been doing for many years in competently and FAIRLY covering Broward County education policy, local and state government and local and state politics.

Not that the Miami Herald has anything to brag about in any of this, either, since they've ben just as asleep at the wheel.

All matters of great concern to me and many of you that I've written about with lots of skepticism, anger and incredulity over the years when comparing what appeared in-print and online in the Sun-Sentinel, and what they should've been doing to get the true facts and context out about the reality of what has been going on in thsi area for many, many years, most of them bad.

Trust me, it was very liberating to do and my birthday gift to myself.

-----.

Per "Lawmakers criticize Hollywood for financial problems"


So, where to start with your article?

Hmm-m... I'll start with the most obvious mistake - lawmakers, as in plural.

Not due to you personally, obviously, but a problem all the same since the only lawmaker -singular- that you actually mention by name in your article is Eleanor Sobel, someone with a demonstrated history of NOT caring so much about what things cost, especially when she can try to use her influence to get them from taxpayers.
(See the bopttom of this post for the proof of that.)

You also never mention the name of the joint panel that heard the testimony, the nine-member Joint Legislative Auditing Committee, or mention or quote ANY of its members by name, even those from South Florida or Broward.
Sort of relevant, don't you think?

Especially in an article headlined mistakenly with the word lawmakers?

Three of the committee's nine members are from Broward or Miami-Dade -state Reps Daphne Campbell and Cynthia Stafford from Miami and state Senator Jeremy Ring of Northwest Broward- and yet somehow, for whatever reasons, you couldn't find them or an unbiased legislator to quote, just Sobel?
Sort of curious, don't you think?

But even more egregiously as far as the actual truth is concerned -and reader's understanding of the story- is the fact that you NEVER mention anywhere in your article that Eleanor Sobel is NOT even on that Joint Committee, despite your quoting her.

I already knew Sobel wasn't on it, and spent 25 minutes on the phone yesterday talking to the Committee's staff on how it is that Sobel came to be there in the room, let alone speak on the matter, but you just let readers assume she was allowed to be there as both the original complainant and a sort of pseudo-judge who got to ask questions of the very people she
complained about, which would strike most people as a clear conflict-of-interest.

And how is it, exactly, that you NEVER actually quote ANYONE who's an actual voting member of the Joint Legislative Auditing Committee that was holding the meeting?

Yes, that's more than a little curious, and God forbid you actually place a link in the article to the meeting's info pack given how little facts and context you actually provide

As for the context phase of the story, or rather the lack of it, you utterly fail to mention the salient fact that it was members of the Hollywood Police and Fire unions, past supporters of Sobel's, who were the two interest groups that were most adversely affected by the various financials moves the city had to make, however clumsily.

To this day, many of them still won't stop complaining and bitching about the overwhelming vote by Hollywood taxpayers against THEM, to show the two unions that notwithstanding whatever moves were made at City Hall, there was, in fact, a finite limit to the sense of entitlement that these employees were allowed to feel via Hollywood taxpayers' wallets and purses.

Which is precisely why Sobel brought the complaint forward in the first place -to carry their water and stay on their good side prior to last November's election

Nobody-but-nobody believes Eleanor Sobel genuinely cared one whit about any of that budget melodrama until she realized that there was a mutuality of interests between her and the unions before the election, and most well-informed people in Hollywood I know and respect would suggest that everything else being equal, it probably wasn't even originally her idea to file the complaint, but rather one "suggested" to her by a little bird.

You may think otherwise, of course, but one of the prevailing opinions about Sobel among well-informed citizens who are actually paying attention and hip to her past antics and practices is that Sobel is utterly without guile, besides not always being the brightest bulb, and totally transparent to a fare-thee-well.

But now that I think about it, "obvious" is probably a much-better description of her than "transparent," because Sobel was certainly anything but transparent or responsive when she was repeatedly asked by residents of SE Broward and news reporters to declare where all that mysterious "outside money" came from in her first FL Senate campaign in 2008, which proceeded to use it to malign, libel or otherwise bitch-slap anyone who ever looked at Eleanor Sobel so much as cross-eyed.

I knew as much in 2006 when I personally observed Sobel displaying her trademark gall by standing-up and trying to speak into a microphone before a Hallandale Beach City Commission meeting started, and because she's pals with Mayor Joy Cooper, she was allowed to make a partisan plug for herself at a govt. facility full of people gathered there to conduct govt. business -the meeting- to get signatures for a petition to get her name on the ballot without paying the S.O.E.

Not signatures for a charity for kids or pets or something else, but rather for herself.

Sobel then proceeded to ignore any notions of normal decorum while the City Commission meeting was going on when she worked the aisles to get signatures on her clipboard.
I just looked at her, aghast, when finally she got to me. 

This, of course, was back when Sobel pretended that she really, really cared about education and kids' futures and wanted to be on the Broward School Board.
It was common knowledge that she only wanted the School Board gig, a govt. job with little heavy lifting, while she waited for bombastic state Senator Steve Geller's term-limited seat to open.
And that's what it was, wasn't it?

After watching that exhibition of narcissism that night in HB, nothing she ever did or said afterwards surprised me

And seriously, tell me again why it is that more than three months after-the-fact, after the City of Hollywood has already taken Jeff Marano and the Broward PBA to court for breaking Hollywood's voter-approved campaign finance law, which the Broward PBA completely trampled in order to get its favored candidates elected, as if their illegal efforts were always their plan, and that any associated court costs, if any, were just the cost of doing businessthe South Florida Sun-Sentinel has still yet to mention this litigation even ONCEmuch less, reported on the latest activities?

Not even once.
No articles, no columns, nothing in the Broward Politics blog and certainly no editorials.
You call that journalism?

I hope that you and your colleagues at the newspaper can manage to be considerably more accurate with the facts and include more useful context the rest of 2013, and that your editors can better manage their self-evident biases, or else it's going to be a very, very long year for the Sun-Sentinel readers who have chosen to remain readers instead of bailing-out because of their continuing disappointment with the current state and direction of the newspaper.

By the way, since I'm sure you've noticed, I've chosen to include other people in this cc, not because I think they care at all about hearing more about Sobelso much as the fact that some of them were (and continue to be) completely oblivious and complicit the last few years in not only self-evident factual screw-ups in the Sun-Sentinel regarding facts and context in stories and editorials regarding Southeast Broward, but about corruption, ethics violations and activities contrary to Florida's constitution in Hallandale Beach that should've appeared but NEVER did, despite their value to the general public.
The fact is that your paper has even endorsed one of the worst offenders.
Twice.

Despite my best efforts and taking the time and effort to educate them via email about the nature of those problems, those managers and editors have consciously avoided, ignored or acted oblivious to the facts-on-the-ground that citizens here could and can see with their own eyes.

Instead of being enterprising and rising to the occasion, the Sun-Sentinel collectively and those people individually, chose not to respond when it really mattered -or since.

Which is why I've consistently posted my fact-filled criticisms of the newspaper and them personally on my blog, so others would be just as well-informed about the facts and their identities as I am.


Today's email then is not directed at you individually, per se, so much as you just happen to be the very last straw after dozens of similar fact patterns, ones that don't seem intent on presenting the whole story to residents of this area who want all the facts.

I've been consistent about wanting facts, context and honesty to matter even while your newspaper continues showing a type of consistency of a completely different sort, and one that is chasing its few remaining readers away.

At this point, in my opinion, the best thing that can happen for concerned residents of Broward is for the Tribune Company to sell the Sun-Sentinel to a group led by someone smart and savvy enough to know that the only way that the paper can ever hope to make any money and be truly relevant and of value to readers in the future is by giving intelligent readers more of what they want.

Someone who will cut out the saturation of fluff and dead stories that makes people so reluctant to buy the paper because they think the whole thing can be read in less than five minutes.

Readers want more in-depth stories on local government and agencies, more/better reporters who are genuinely curious and self-motivated, don't take things for granted and who actually hustle to create a broad array of resources in the community to turn to and quote, instead of relying on the same old familiar cadre of suspects making the same old blandishments.

Clear-cut the deadwood that doesn't seem to aspire to more than banal, and who perpetually want to be begged to show-up to cover the news, and then, seem to want the public to be grateful if they DO show-up.

Since that isn't going to happen in the next few months, I'm going to make things much easier for myself and simply pull the plug on the Sun-Sentinel and give up on thinking there's any logical reason for me or any of my well-informed, civic-minded friends to contact anyone there about anything at all, when it's like spitting into the wind.

I'll start on that later today by posting this on my blog, sending links to it to the circle of people I know locally and around the state who've come to trust my judgment from experience, and then, I'll start deleting every single Tribune/Sun-Sentinel email address I have on my computer.
(So, there's no point in you or anyone in that cc field responding to this, since it'll just go straight to spam. It's a little late to be concerned now.)

After all, you can't wake people up who are pretending to be asleep, and I and so many people I know who wanted this city and that paper to be much-better than they are, are tired of pretending that anything we say or do is going to change things at the Sun-Sentinel  until that new owner eventually comes in and starts making BIG changes in personnel and employee attitudes.

-----
InspectorGeneral
Jan 30


to me

Your email  has been received by the Broward Office of the Inspector General.  Your information will be reviewed to determine what action will be taken.

Description: Description: cid:image001.png@01CDA55F.DF5CA7C0

Sincerely,


Broward Office of the Inspector General
-----

Cathy Swanson-Rivenbark
Jan 30

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I was not aware of the material.  I will address it immediately and I will also put a protocol in place to prevent it from happening again.  Regards, Cathy Swanson-Rivenbark

From: David B. Smith
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 2:33 PM
To: Cathy Swanson-Rivenbark
Cc: John W. Scott; Bryan, Susannah
Subject: Please try to do a better job in 2013 of preventing partisan political material from being left in the public lobby outside the City Comm. Chambers -for months at a time
-----

Please try to do a better job in 2013 of preventing partisan political material from being left in the public lobby outside the City Comm. Chambers -for months at a time

David B. Smith
Jan 30 

to Cathy
Dear City Manager:

Please do a better job in 2013 than in 2012 of preventing overtly partisan
political material from being left in the public lobby outside the City Clerk's
office and outside the City Comm. Chambers -for MONTHS at a time.

The offenders are State Sen. Eleanor Sobel and state Rep. Elaine Schwartz,
who already have a district office that's just steps from Hollywood City Hall.
One that in the case of Sen. Sobel, was actually subsidized by Hollywood
taxpayers a few years ago as I recall from having been present at the City
Commission meeting where it was approved.

It still remains unclear to me why that was such a great deal for Hollywood
taxpayers, rather than Sen. Sobel actually paying rent out of her legislative
account for a space at one of the many empty storefronts along Hollywood
Blvd. between City Hall and Young Circle.
She'd certainly have plenty to choose from.

Sobel and Schwartz or perhaps their pals and "helpers" would do well to
NOT keep bringing over copies of articles that mention them by name and
leaving those copies in very conspicuous locations in the public lobby.
(It's not fooling anyone.)

Even worse, leaving copies of articles that support the position in Tallahassee
of interest groups who are well-known campaign contributors of Sen. Sobel,
like various medical associations, to say nothing of copies of actual political
endorsements of them. 
It's all a little too frequent and too coincidental not to be an actual plan.
A self-defeating plan as it turns out.

Last week, upon visiting the second floor to look at the Sunshine Board
outside the City Clerk's office for some information about some upcoming
public meetings, for about the 12th time in the past six months -though 
it's probably much more- I saw overtly pro-Schwartz and pro-Sobel 
materials carefully placed in the public lobby where they couldn't possibly
be missed. 

While it may not be unethical, per se, it's both tacky and unprofessional
and makes it seem like the city is just winking at this overtly partisan
behavior.

I could have sent this to you a year ago and it would have been just as true.
I apologize for not having done so then, but the problem remains...