Other things the Post beat reporter for Lake Worth writes about...

Chris Persaud is currently assigned the beat of covering Lake Worth for the Palm Beach Post. He has a story in today's 'B' section. Lately, Mr. Persaud has shown an ability to communicate the facts, successfully avoiding the "corrections" section. For those of you unaware, the Post publishes their corrections and clarifications on page 2 of the printed version of the paper's 'A' section, generally at the bottom of the page. Mr. Persaud has the rare honor of having to publish a correction and then having to publish a correction to the correction. You can read about that here.

Notably, I cannot find where the corrections are in the on line edition of the paper.

In another story that he is covering outside of Lake Worth, Mr. Persaud has weighed in on the "Double D Saloon" controversy that has many people upset. I think most people would not be happy to have a strip club in the neighborhood. You can read Mr. Persaud's story here.

The question I have is this, after reading Mr. Persaud's story, is there any there there? Do you feel like you've been manipulated just a little bit?

Mr. Persaud starts off the story with this paragraph:

Two Palm Beach County commissioners — Hal Valeche and Steven Abrams — PREVIOUSLY [emphasis added] accepted campaign contributions from the man behind the Double D strip club, whose construction along Southern Boulevard west of Florida’s Turnpike has generated fierce opposition from western communities’ residents.

A full 8 paragraphs later, after your blood pressure has already spiked, Mr. Persaud writes this:

The permit to build the Double D was issued in 2001, long before either Valeche or Abrams won a seat on the county commission.

If the sentence above was included in the first paragraph of the story, where campaign contributions by County Commissioners Valeche and Abrams were reported, wouldn't that have changed the entire perspective of the story? Would this be an example of "spin". Here is the definition of spin.

At least on the local level, I have found that campaign contributions do not sway the voting pattern of elected officials in a meaningful way anyway. It is also impossible to vote "retroactively", which would be the case if there were a there there in this story.