Broward county still not taking responsibility.
A public relations consultant for the Broward school district apologized Tuesday after a video surfaced in which she described critics of the district in the Parkland massacre as “crazies” and a reporter as “skanky.”
Sara Brady, who was paid nearly $75,000 to assist the district after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, told an audience of public relations professionals last July that critics of the school district’s controversial Promise program, which allowed students who commit minor crimes to avoid jail, were “crazies.”
She criticized an unnamed reporter who routinely covers the district as “just a jerk” and then got more personal.
“He is sloppy, he’s reckless, he’s mean, and he smells bad,” she said, laughing along with the audience. “The questions that he sends are just plain not legitimate.”
At another point in the video she describes him as “that nasty, skanky reporter.”
Her statement about “crazies” concerned what happened after a state commission concluded that the Promise program had not been a factor in the shooting. The district put out a tweet about that conclusion, prompting criticism from critics of the district.
“And sure enough, all the crazies kind of came out,” Brady told an audience in California, in a video revealed by the South Florida Sun Sentinel in a story about the school district’s public relations damage control after the shooting. “The district knows who the crazies are and who the opposition is, and so certainly they seized on it and started putting stuff out there.”
The Promise program had been seized upon nationwide by conservative critics who were happy to lay part of the blame for the shooting on a program supported by President Obama. But the program had also been criticized by many family members of the victims in the massacre.
“Our leaders don’t care about Parkland families!” Hunter Pollack, whose sister Meadow was killed in the attack, said in a Twitter post that went viral. “Broward’s Superintendent and his PR person called grieving families “crazies,”, “the opposition,” and call hardworking reporters “skanks” for exposing the truth. Retweet and expose them all!”
Brady, of Winter Park, apologized, saying her comments had not been aimed at the bereaved families.
“Mr. Pollack … my remarks we’re intended to poke at the media in general,” she wrote in response. “I offer my profound apology for my lapse in judgment and display of disrespect.”