I covered Trump’s visit Friday. I was in the media section – which I later regretted. My husband was in general seating and he had great seats and was in a better position than I was to get great photos. However, I had my super-duper long lens – and a ladder. I only had a ladder because another photographer brought two ladders and he could only be on one at a time. Therefore, I was the guardian of the ladder he wasn’t on. The atmosphere was electric and positive. There were some protestors outside – but not very many. We had someone call our office on Friday and invite us to go protest with them. For the record, media doesn’t protest – or shouldn’t protest – though they do it all the time – in their own pages. But, that is another topic. The civic center was full rafters to floor. There were even rows of people two deep in front of the media pit – where they weren’t supposed to be. Thankfully – I had the aforementioned ladders. Every time Trump mentioned fake news or the lying media, some in the crowd in front of us would turn around and sneer and snicker – a little. They were trying to be as polite as possible while sneering – but I felt like I was in a cage at a Zoo and we were the attraction. However, they quickly forgot about us – in between jabs from Trump. Of course, I knew he wasn’t talking about Navarre Press. I even had someone tell me later that every time they heard Trump call out the fake news media he thought – “except Navarre Press.” He must have been reading my mind – because that is what I was thinking. When I was with Matt Gaetz on Open Gaetz Day in Navarre even Gaetz told me that he has never had an instance when Navarre Press has misrepresented him. And, for good reason, we don’t. We aren’t perfect and don’t pretend to be. We own up to our mistakes and fix them. But we don’t take news out of the paper because it is derogatory to our friends and we don’t put slants on stories. There isn’t anyone that we would go out of our way to compromise our core values or our mission for. There just isn’t – because there is no one worth compromising ourselves for. And, there is a lot of salacious “news” we know that we don’t print because it really isn’t news.
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