Florida’s Most Powerful Utility Reportedly Paid a News Site to Spread Propaganda

Florida’s largest utility firm funneled cash to a information web site, which it then used to defend the utility’s positions and assault critics, two bombshell stories discover. Leaked paperwork reviewed by each the Orlando Sentinel and the Miami Herald paint a portrait of how Florida Power and Light (FPL) executives used consultants and shell firms to get pro-utility articles and hits towards its political enemies printed on a neighborhood Florida information web site, the Capitolist.

The paperwork reviewed by each information retailers present that the editor of the Capitolist, Brian Burgess, who as soon as labored because the communications director for Florida’s former Republican Gov. Rick Scott, will get his paycheck (a cool $12,000 a month—so that’s the way you make journalism worthwhile!) solely from shell firms managed by FPL’s consultants. The utility made certain it acquired what it paid for: The retailers report that FPL consultants had been capable of “pre-screen” articles printed on the Capitolist, with the power to each order articles written on sure subjects and alter particulars all the way down to the headlines and content material of the items. The Capitolist by no means disclosed its monetary relationship with FPL both in its tales or on its web site.

“As we stated to the Miami Herald and Orlando Sentinel, we cannot prove the veracity of the documents that have been leaked to reporters,” an FPL spokesperson informed Earther in an e mail. “We have seen evidence that some of these documents have been doctored to try to make FPL look bad. We have found absolutely no evidence of illegality or wrongdoing by FPL or its employees.”

The spokesperson went on: “To be clear, owning a media organization is not and has never been a crime. For example, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, Boston Red Sox owner John Henry owns the Boston Globe and a private investment firm owns the Miami Herald. While it would be perfectly legal, FPL does not have an ownership interest in the Capitolist – either directly or indirectly. We also do not have editorial control over what the Capitolist writes or publishes. As we do with media organizations across the state and nation, we distribute news releases to the Capitolist and, when requested, respond to its media inquiries.”

Capitolist editor Burgess additionally informed the Herald the data have “fundamental errors or omissions that paint a wildly inaccurate picture of the Capitolist and its operations,” with out giving specifics. We reached out to Burgess for remark however haven’t heard again at time of publication.

Florida Power and Light is a subsidiary of NextEra Energy, the biggest utility within the nation; FPL is the state’s largest utility, serving some 12 million people throughout Florida. It’s additionally a political powerhouse, and its behind-the-scenes maneuvering within the statehouse and past and has been the topic of a number of current investigations from each native publications. This yr, an investigation uncovered the utility for writing the textual content of a invoice that will have kneecapped rooftop photo voltaic in Florida; data present FPL gave direct contributions to politicians who used utility-written textual content to introduce laws in each the House and the Senate. (Incredibly, in a uncommon pro-environmental transfer, Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed the invoice earlier than it might develop into regulation.)

Seems that as FPL was paying off politicians, it was additionally paying off the media. The Capitolist was based in 2016, and the Herald stories that FPL executives appear to have had enter within the Capitolist’s reporting way back to 2018. That relationship solidified in 2019, when a shell firm owned by Abigail MacIver, who was then employed by an organization employed to seek the advice of with FPL, signed a purchase order choice settlement with the Capitolist, which gave the shell firm “executive control” within the Capitolist’s operations. (MacIver, by the best way, has some hefty fossil gas profession bona fides: per her LinkedIn, she labored for greater than 4 years on the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity Foundation and in addition labored on the Partnership for Affordable Clean Energy, a pro-utility front group.)

This association, and the cautious use of shell firms, allowed FPL to take care of a distance from the Capitolist itself whereas its paid intermediaries did the soiled work. (Burgess stated in an announcement to the Herald that he had “never received a story pitch from any FPL executive outside of typical corporate press releases sent to all media outlets—which the paper acknowledged is true, as the documents show him only communicating with consultants and shell companies.) The two reports out this week contain a whole bunch of details about how FPL intermediaries shaped coverage, including:

• Text messages show Dan Martell, FPL’s vice president of state legislative affairs, suggesting to MacIver a piece on DeSantis’s opponent in the 2018 gubernatorial election. A piece with Martell’s suggested talking points went up on the Capitolist three hours after his initial text. “Promote the @&;$&!!! Out of this,” Martell informed MacIver.
• The Capitolist typically took goal on the Herald and the Sentinel, two retailers that had been doggedly tracing FPL’s political affect, particularly reporter Mary Ellen Klas. In one e mail to consultants after the Herald’s father or mother firm filed for chapter, Eric Silagy, FPL’s CEO, suggests “a cartoon of [Klas] with a tin cup on the street corner” to run in a chunk.
• In 2020, Burgess pitched a narrative to MacIver on utilities shutting off energy through the pandemic over unpaid payments. MacIver emailed her boss, Jeff Pitts, the first liaison with FPL, to recommend permitting the story to run, because it “makes [Burgess] look like he’s not in our pocket and it isn’t bad for FPL, especially if he highlights them as being a good actor.” The ensuing story included a bullet level on an FPL schooling marketing campaign on learn how to lower down on vitality prices.

Electric utilities are a number of the strongest political gamers in statehouses across the nation, and so they typically go to nice lengths to protect their supremacy. Many utilities are additionally obsessive about controlling their public picture: as we reported final yr, some utilities have gone as far as to demand folks criticizing them on social media be fired or spoken to by their bosses. Utilities aren’t the one massive vitality gamers capitalizing on their very own media websites—Chevron has paid for a complete newspaper in California for years, and lately marketed job postings for journalists for a brand new “newsroom”—however the Capitolist exhibits how far a utility would possibly go to maintain their agenda hidden.

And these stories present that FPL’s media aspirations might go above and past only one outlet. In a 2020 e mail despatched to MacIver, Burgess advised shopping for all papers in Florida presently owned by media large Gannett, proprietor of the USA Today model of papers, and “let[ting] most of the clown reporters go … and syndicate content across the entire state. We could even do it stealthily so we could inject content into all those publications and nobody has to know who’s actually pulling the strings.”

MacIver forwarded Burgess’s e mail to Pitts, who then forwarded it to Martell and Silagy. Burgess, Pitts wrote, “has a good concept/observation that I’m sure others are thinking about.”