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Uncle Luke, the man whose booty-shaking madness made the U.S. Supreme Court stand up for free speech, gets as nasty as he wants to be for Miami New Times. This week, Luke ranks the least trustworthy names in local news.
Miami has a lot of
media personalities and journalists who are full of it. They use
their lofty positions to spread poorly thought-out opinions and don’t
do any real reporting. You can’t trust nearly anything they say or
write. Here’s my list of the worst news reporters, columnists, talk
show hosts, and publishers:
5. Rachel Reeves
The chief executive of local black newspaper the Miami
Times is interested only in
making money. She doesn’t care about doing quality journalism. When
I was running for county mayor last year, I found out the first story
is free. But a “second interview,” I was later told, “would cost me.”
4. Sid Rosenberg
The
640 AM sports talk radio host goes on the air to castrate athletes
who act stupid off the field. But when he gets busted for driving
under the influence after a night at the titty bar, it’s all
hush-hush. He also has a history of making offensive remarks, like
saying that Venus and Serena Williams belong on the cover of National
Geographic and that the United
States women’s soccer team is a “bunch of juiced-up dykes.”
3. Fred Grimm
The
Herald‘s
metro columnist is a hypocrite. Last year, when I endorsed former
Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina over Carlos Gimenez in the county mayoral
race, Grimm wrote a column attacking me by bringing up my 20-year-old
arrest record and my raunchy lyrics with 2 Live Crew. But Grimm has
not written one word criticizing Gimenez for getting in bed with
Robaina and current Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez. I’m still
waiting for a Grimm column slamming the Gimenez re-election
campaign’s role in the latest absentee-ballot fraud scandal to
embarrass Miami-Dade County.
2. Barry Jackson
This
Miami
Herald sportswriter is an
all-star hack. He has misquoted me in stories about the University of
Miami football program. He will also take things out of context for a
juicy quote. I have cussed him out more than any other reporter
because he always gets it wrong.
1. Michael Putney
The
host of WPLG-TV’s This
Week in South Florida uses his
show and a semimonthly column in the Miami
Herald to promote projects that
are bad for the community. For example, he advocated for Genting, the
company that wants to build a casino/resort on the site of the
current Herald
offices despite widespread opposition to the project. Oddly, he
sometimes opposes development in the African-American community. Last
year, he criticized Miami City Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones
because she tried to give grant money to small-business owners in
Liberty City to fix up their storefronts.
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