Lake Sentinel Hit Piece on Lake County Rep fails to get updates or disclose it is a year old

Tavares, FL   -  Lake County, FL    -   December 7, 2014

Rep. O'Toole is at the right in this picture with Sen. Alan Hays at a recent Lake County Legislators Delegation meeting in Leesburg.

Update Mon., Dec. 8 - I just spent two hours with Rep. O'Toole and will be updating this article by Dec. 9th with "the rest of the story" not provided by the Lake Sentinel.

Normally, I appreciate the articles and columns in the Lake Sentinel newspaper section about local politics.  However, today the Orlando Sentinel "Lake Sentinel" published verbatim a YEAR OLD Tampa Bay Times article disclosing that local FL House Rep. Marlene O'Toole (The Villages) had received $50,000 annual income from the local non-profit, Take Stock in Children, while voting twice for Florida State to give them a total of $15-million.  The issue is a valid one, but a year old.

However, the Lake Sentinel did not publish the article on their website, so we found it on the Tampa Bay Times website HERE.   

And, magically, the source article was written A YEAR AGO in Nov. 30, 2013, but the Orlando Sentinel did not disclose that.

Both the Tampa and Orlando articles start with the exact same paragraphs, but readers of the Lake Sentinel version have no clue that the story is over a year old.  And, the Lake Sentinel did not post any update or current quotes from O'Toole.

So, it kinda looks like a hit piece to me.

I have left messages for Rep. O'Toole to contact me to provide an update. I am betting she either dropped income from Take Stock in Children or is recusing votes on their projects.  If I receive updates, I will add those updates HERE.

Here is a comment I left on the Lake Sentinel Facebook page, with cartoon:

Why did the Lake Sentinel publish today a YEAR old Tampa Bay News hit piece on FL Rep. Marlene O'Toole without 1) disclosing the verbatim article was a YEAR old, 2) providing any updates on the YEAR OLD issue or 3) publishing any CURRENT quotes or response from O'Toole. That is bad journalism. 

 

vj