Setting the record straight
OPINION
BY JENNIFER CABRERA
Last night, the Gainesville Sun accused Alachua Chronicle of making false statements about the Sun’s reporting. In fact, it is the Sun that is making false statements.
In an article titled “Lawmaker calls for resignation of Gainesville mayor, GRU general manager” by Sun reporter Nora O’Neill, the Sun makes the following claim about Alachua Chronicle:
“In an article published Tuesday by the Alachua Chronicle, the conservative blog site reports that Cunningham recently asked Rasnick whether the PFM memo supported delaying the bonds, to which she emailed him ‘no.’ The website also falsely stated The Sun reported as much, though PFM never offered a formal recommendation, only guidance.”
However, the Alachua Chronicle article simply quoted a previous article from the Sun and linked to the relevant article (a courtesy the Sun did not extend when writing about Alachua Chronicle yesterday).
The sentence below is from our article, “GRU documents point to Mayor Ward as source of decision to delay debt issuance, costing GRU $2.9 million“:
“Rasnick’s email was in response to a question from Cunningham about a memo from PFM, the City’s independent financial advisor, that City Attorney Daniel Nee reportedly showed Caruso at the meeting; the Gainesville Sun obtained a copy and characterized the memo as ‘show[ing] GRU’s financial advisor saying the bond swap was a sound financial decision.'”
The phrase in quotation marks in that sentence is taken directly from this paragraph in the linked article in the Sun:
“A memo from PFM Financial Advisors to Rasnick obtained by the Sun on Tuesday via public records shows GRU’s financial advisor saying the bond swap was a sound financial decision.”
When a reporter says that a memo “shows” something, that does indeed “characterize” the memo.
I have asked Andrew Caplan to remove the false statements about Alachua Chronicle’s reporting.
I love the smell of desperation in the morning.
Got to keep them honest!!
Not possible!
The Sun and most small city newspapers owned by Gannett will be out of business in a year.
Further the employees perpetuating these falsehoods will likely lose their jobs (learn to code?). That makes me VERY happy.
This is one dudes opinion, of course.
A false statement in the Gainesville Sun is like a tree falling in the forest when nobody is around. – prov
Thank you for all you do, Jennifer! We need more people like you who work hard to fight for the truth and for what is right. We appreciate you!
Ditto!!
The first false statement is that the Alachua Chronicle is a conservative “blog” site.
conservative news source more appropriate?
From what I can see of her “work” (incessantly and mindlessly regurgitating every single mainstream Democratic Party talking point), liberal hack/social media non-personality Nora O’Neill seems to lack even the most basic standards of personal and journalistic ethics.
In my opinion, the Alachua Chronicle blows government propaganda rags like the failing and irrelevant Gainesville Sun out of the water on a daily basis.
Nora O’Neill and fellow hollow NPC shill / GS Editor Andrew Caplan form the embarrassing and tepid core of our local version of Pravda. A summary of their current programming, in case you were ever tempted to stop ignoring the Gainesville Sun like everyone else:
– High electric bills good
– Ron DeSantis bad
– Rainbow people can’t use bathrooms
– Joe Biden good
– Ron DeSantis bad
– Female impersonators can’t use bathrooms
– Police bad
– Grace Marketplace good
– Christians bad
– $3M waste was Ron DeSantis’ fault, not Harvey Ward
– Investigating city corruption bad
– Ron DeSantis bad
– Open container good
– Ron DeSantis bad
Nora is the sterotypical and sophomoric “i’M tHe ReSistEnce” liberal who is actually nothing more than a stooge for the Establishment.
School district Superintendent bad. Tina Certain good. People against the comprehensive school zoning are segregationists and bad.
Ouch!
You either wear Birkenstocks or Depends if you still take the Gville Sun seriously. It’s an advertisement platform, not a news outlet.
Good luck placing an ad. Even that is difficult, with their “online advertising staff” located in a different city at some other newspaper. Fill out their contact form and wait to be contacted. The Sun is stuttering along like the HAL 9000 with half its chips removed.
Last one out turn out the lights.
I worked part-time for the Sun for many years. It was fun. Journalism is a lot of fun.
Sadly, after many sales it’s not the great local newspaper it once was.
That being said…there’s something about getting a paper fresh off the press with the ink still wet.
Good times.
I trust this site MUCH more than gainesville sun. Actually don’t trust anything coming from leftist news.
Well, the spirit of journalism is alive here. I agree.
Truth matters. Reputation matters. Public perception matters. Ownership of your rights to your personal integrity matters. The right to be protected from media outlets which publish false accusations of innocent citizens matters just as much as news outlets care about their rights to be represented accurately by other reporting outlets. Individual citizens and their families are forced to cope with false allegations against their reputations when wrongfully publicized. At least you own your paper and can speak out on your behalf to counter the lies at your discretion. I only wish the same consideration had been extended to a few very fine citizens who were falsely accused and publicized, but were found innocent of the lies. The falsehoods were publicized and the individuals were subsequently raked over the coals in the comments section. However investigation found them innocent, but sadly the lies had already been published. Glad this paper had the choice to counter. Wish the common citizen had the same choice to be protected from publishing false accusations and crushing comments.
Hopefully this site and the Sun will sort out and correct the record on these details. Reading both, if possible, is beneficial, given one person can’t cover all all the news.
Even as a liberal democrat, I have several times praised Jennifer’s fair and even reporting of the facts of local events, and the Chronicle’s willingness to not strike contrary comments by the likes of me and a few others. Cheering for the demise of local newspapers like the Sun however, by some commenting here, is just rooting for ignorance and a time – pretty much here – where Americans get their information from those who tell them what they want to here – or worse, like this.
“A social media account recommended by Elon Musk for its coverage of the Israeli war with Hamas with a long history of antisemitic posts is connected to a southwest London teenager, according to research and a text exchange with the account.
The second account Musk recommended in the now-deleted post, @sentdefender, has been identified by a research company as belonging to a member of the U.S. military from Georgia who has amplified Russian propaganda. As previously reported, both have spread false information, including reporting a nonexistent explosion near the White House that sent stock prices down.
Both accounts were among seven cited a week ago by researchers at the University of Washington as the “new elites” of influence on X, with more than 1.6 billion combined views in the first three days of the war…”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/27/x-twitter-elite-hamas-accounts-london-georgia/
Unfortunately, the large social media companies are not doing that well policing their platforms – they are not owned by the government and therefore not subject to the 1st amendment – and misinformation is so rampant, that large segments of the American population stupidly still believe Trump won the 2020 election (see GOP House majority). This should alarm most of us, or we are already lost.
Usually disagree with you, Jazzman, but in this post you are spot on. It’s much easier to alter history when it’s on a centralized computer rather than on paper in thousands of homes.
I was going to say something like this.
Jazz and I don’t have a lot in common but he sure hit a home run with this one.
I find his comments very interesting.
Glad we agree or see things similarly on something, anon and that guy. I guess there’s hope if we can still communicate.
If you go far enough down the Rabbit Hole, the Gainesville Sun is owned and controlled by foreign entities of questionable nature. Thank You for calling them to the carpet.
The legacy media HATES independent media.
Excellent! Haven’t read the Gville Sun in years. Very thankful the Alachua Chronicle is here for me to keep up with local news
Funny to see so many people bashing the Gainesville Sun, and calling it “government propaganda”. Really? How dumb can you be?
I’d love to see the Chronicle challenge UF and dig deep into the corruption that surrounds Alachua County’s government.
However, most journalists nowadays are lazy and refuse to get into the thicket of the drama and do true professional journalism.
The difference I’ve seen lately from the Sun and the Chronicle, is that the Chronicle will copy and paste press releases.
They don’t do any type of investigative reporting, probably because they’re either too scared to step on toes, or don’t have enough people that have a backbone to do true reporting.
Anyone can take a press release and write a report.
But it takes a true journalist to actually investigate.
Take the Vigil for example at UF, the Chronicle just reported the injury statement from UF. There weren’t just 5 people injured from that event. UF is always going to downplay events that make them look bad.
So yes, props to the Sun for actually getting information from UF Health and talking to witnesses, like true journalists.
Plus, I’m sure this comment will get deleted as the Chronicle has deleted comments that doesn’t favor them, so who is really spreading misinformation and propaganda and trying to make themselves look better?
And who really takes the time to investigate and report?
Definitely not the Chronicle that’s for sure!
Just this week:
1. Investigative report showing the City of Gainesville is no longer even recording many meetings, much less posting them for the public – no other outlet has reported on this.
2. Investigative report of GRU documents that claim Mayor Ward did direct GRU to delay issuing the bonds – other outlets have had to refer to Alachua Chronicle reporting because they don’t have the documents.
3. Investigative report uncovering GPD Internal Affairs report – no other outlet has reported on this.
Out of the last 10-ish articles on the main page, 8-9 are straight up copied and pasted press releases. Only 2 are actually investigative pieces. Lol.