‘TRUTH BE TOLD’: Brevard Sheriff Wayne Ivey Discusses Media Integrity, Releases Gregory Edwards Video

SHERIFF CALLS OUT LOCAL NEWSPAPER EDITOR

ABOVE VIDEO: Brevard Sheriff Wayne Ivey Releases Gregory Edwards Video.

WATCH: Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey released his first installment of “Truth Be Told” on Tuesday evening, and you can watch the video above and read the transcript in its entirety below.

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Starting right now…every time the media intentionally lies or misleads our citizens about a story involving our agency, I am going to come on “Truth Be Told” and call them out.

BREVARD COUNTY, FLORIDA – Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey released his first installment of “Truth Be Told” on Tuesday evening, and you can watch the video above and read the transcript in its entirety below:

Over the course of the past forty years of my career I have learned two things about the media…first that the overwhelming amount of reporters are good and decent people who simply report the news with no slant or hidden agenda and secondly that there are also morally corrupt and deceitful reporters who lie, slant their stories, and above all else intentionally mislead their audience because they have a hidden agenda or just plan out, a disdain for law enforcement.

To those who do it right, I say bravo as you are a valued piece of our great nation and you should be proud of your profession, and to those who do it wrong, I say… “It’s time The Truth Be Told!”

For the past 8 years as Sheriff of Brevard County I have tolerated and often not responded to malicious and misleading stories that attacked the integrity of our agency, our members, our mission, and me…but not anymore. Starting right now I’m firing back at those who take untruthful shots at us.

Starting right now…every time the media intentionally lies or misleads our citizens about a story involving our agency, I am going to come on “Truth Be Told” and call them out.

I can no longer sit idly by and allow the media to tarnish the good names of the men and women of our agency, especially when they know the real truth about what an amazing job our team is doing to protect our community.

Look, let’s be honest I’m not always going to like the story that is written, but there is a huge difference between a story that tells the truth about what happened and one that intentionally misleads our community in an attempt to undermine the confidence our citizens have in our agency.

If we mess up then by all means we deserve a story that says we messed up, but 99 percent of the time we do it right and yet some in the media will mislead the public with their agenda-driven story to make our citizens think we did it wrong.

In fact, ask yourself this…when is the last time you read or saw in the media something positive about what a law enforcement officer did. We save lives every day, we protect schools every day, we rescue pets every day and I’ll bet you can’t tell me the last time you heard about any of that from the media.

Why? Because apparently heroics, integrity and professionalism don’t sell papers!

So starting tonight, if a news outlet lies or misrepresents the truth to our citizens I’m going to call them out while also sharing with the public what really happened so everyone can see firsthand the truth about the incident and how a select few media outlets don’t let facts get in the way of a good story or headline.

In fact, in the coming week I’m going to show our citizens the whole truth about Gregory Edwards and not just the extremely slanted version that Florida Today has written no less than 50 articles about when they could have simply told the truth in one article alone, especially since they had all of the facts…but hey why let facts and evidence get in the way of a good story?

Now to set the stage I’m going to start out by showing you the true level of deceit that Florida Today actually possesses by playing a video that was recorded in my conference room during an interview I did specifically at the request of Florida Today several years ago.

Since becoming Sheriff I have always had a member of our team openly record any interviews I do with the media to make sure that I am not misquoted or what I said taken out of context.

In this particular case, Florida Today was invited to my office and told me that I was going to have the interview recorded so they could have a copy of it and thereby stop asking me the same questions over and over again through repeated calls for interviews on the same subject.

Well apparently reporters don’t like being recorded themselves and as you will see during the video I’m about to play, they also apparently forget they are being recorded as Bobby Block, the Watchdog Editor for the Florida Today boldly brags about what happens if someone refuses to speak with them.

So basically if you talk to them the citizens get one story and if you don’t “well duh!”

I think we all know what “well duh” means and in fact, we have gotten to see firsthand what it means as Florida Today has repeatedly targeted me, our agency and our Deputies since the very day I stopped speaking to them because of their lack of integrity, misquoting of statements, and the fact that their Watch Dog Editor, Bobby Block told me and several other prominent members of our community that he was brought here, to the Florida Today to take me down.

That’s right folks, he told me straight to my face in a restaurant that he was brought to the Florida Today to take me and several other elected leaders down and he also told the same thing to several other members of our community. Now either he is telling the truth about that or he is attempting to make himself feel important through those actions but either way his integrity is in question.

So now that you have had a chance to see “The Real Truth” about how Florida Today approaches their articles, this coming Friday at 12:30 p.m. I am going to release the true story of what happened to Gregory Edwards.

Over the course of the past 22 months, Florida Today has intentionally lied and misled the public about Edwards’ death while suggesting that our Deputies were responsible when they knew all along that was just not true.

Well, this Friday at 12:30 p.m. right here on “Truth Be Told” you will get to see and evaluate for yourself the jail security video that a Circuit Judge has now authorized me to release that shows exactly how professionally my team responded to Greg Edwards violent attack on Deputy Brian Otto.

– Wayne Ivey, Brevard County Sheriff

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