The University of Florida’s journalism school has been co-opted by a former Associated Press reporter who has worked to weaponize several students working under his direction to attack a Republican State Representative who is well-known for being a major supporter of President Trump.
Anthony Sabatini, a first-year State Representative who has filed legislation to make it a criminal act for elected officials to pass sanctuary city laws welcoming illegals, was a former City Commissioner in the town of Eustis, FL and currently serves in the Florida National Guard. He came under fire a month or so before the 2018 elections for a photo that surfaced from high school, where he dressed as his African-American friend, who also dressed up as Sabatini during a school spirit week.
His friend stated that Sabatini never showcased any racist ideas and that he saw no problem with their costume swap. 56%+ of voters sided with Sabatini against his Democrat opponent, who tried to use the issue to jump-start her campaign.
Now he is one of the more libertarian-leaning legislators in the Florida House and a young face of the Florida GOP, who refuses to apologize for his hard-line stances on immigration and the 2nd amendment. That has drawn the attention of the News academy of Journalism at the University of Florida, mainly from visiting lecturer and investigative journalism professor Ted Bridis.
Bridis has a documented history of writing articles critical or Trump or celebrating the roadblocks he has faced as an establishment outsider. Bridis also claimed the National Enquirer tried to shut down “public interest reporting” on Trump. Public interest reporting is a term often used by mainstream media hacks to create a notion of perceived interest in their obsessive targeting of their opponents and framing it in a manner that seems innocuous… “We’re just trying to give the people what they want…”
Sabatini seems to have really gotten under the MAGA-phobic journalist’s skin. We were made aware by several sources last week that Bridis has instructed his journalism students to engage in a harassment campaign of Sabatini’s previous campaign donors, fixating on how the freshman State Legislator frequently dressed up in varying costumes during school spirit weeks.
Per WUFT, the University of Florida’s student news outlet.
“Me and a friend of mine, when we were 16 years old, we dressed up as each other at school one day,” he said in an interview. “I used black paint to darken my skin. No one cared, we all laughed, the whole school thought it was funny. Went home, that was it.”
He said more than a decade later, news organizations were using the photo to stoke controversy. “Racial animus had nothing to do with it,” he said.
Sabatini’s friend in the photo, Brandon Evans, told the Orlando Sentinel there was no racist motivation.
“Every year at high school homecoming week, we had things like ‘80s days and celebrity days,” Evans said. “We said, ‘I’m going to be you and you’re going to be me.’ I don’t know how it got to be seen as racial. That’s all it was.”
Armed with extreme bias, they are neglecting to tell donors that nobody was offended by Sabatini’s alleged Blackface or Brownface outfits, withholding how several of his classmates defended his actions on the record and denounced accusations of Mr. Sabatini being racist. Weaponized with talking points allegedly provided to the students by the professor, several aspiring journalists were corrupted by Bridis’ political machinations in their cold calls to Sabatini’s donors, which the University of Florida’s student publication reported.
Harassing donors with obsessive Fake News is far from professional or anything resembling investigative journalism? That’s activism journalism and the epitome of Trump Derangement Syndrome driven reporting methods.
This is another example of how journalism schools have turned into entirely political instruments of the disturbingly liberal and anti-American cesspool of modern academia. The University of Florida should be ashamed of themselves.
Bridis declined to provide comment on his activities or provide an explanation of his actions.
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