I recently reported on what I consider to be sleaze journalism more suited to The National Enquirer than an institution that purports itself as the official county news organ. The full article is here: Superintendent in Monroe County Georgia Harassed After Being Outed as Gay Basically Will Smith, the editor/publisher of the Monroe Daily Reporter, seems to have allowed his own ideology and his position as the editor to try and ruin a man’s life and career because he has a problem with gay people.
In one tweet he uses the term “Gay-Stapo” likening gays to the Nazi Gestapo.
I suppose the irony that the real Gestapo rounded up homosexuals and sent them to the their death in concentration camps escapes him. They were given a pink triangle at the camps. Thousands of homosexuals died in the gas chambers along with Jews, Poles, leftists, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses and many other people the Nazi’s deemed undesirable. I wonder if he would be so flippant about calling Jews Jew-stapo? or Poles the Pole-stapo?
Mr. Smith thought it was newsworthy to publish a slimy innuendo-laden article about the local Superintendent of schools being gay. This came about from an anonymous source that sent a tip his way advising him that the superintendent had a profile on Grindr. This is an app similar to Tinder but for gay men. There is nothing unusual about any gay man having an account on Grindr and in fact I would be more surprised to find a gay man without an account on Grindr. It can be used to make friends, chat, and also for more intimate encounters not unlike Twitter or Facebook. There is noting untoward about having or using that app especially in a town without a gay bar or any other gay clubs where people could meet. Even in Macon, GA the closest city of size to Forsyth lacks even one gay bar. If open records requests were submitted to heterosexual public officials in Monroe County to snoop around their phones I am quite sure you would see the equivalent apps and messages on their phones as well. Perhaps some open request records are in order? 😉
Well after I published my last article I received a tip from someone from Monroe County. It appears that Will Smith is overtly homophobic and isn’t afraid to share his views on social media. All journalists are biased and have political views. I certainly do not hide my views. That is not unusual at all since they are human beings. What is unusual however is choosing to be overtly racist or homophobic on social media. Some things are beyond the pale regardless of your views especially when you are the editor and publisher. I will post some tweets below and you can be the judge. But it now appears that this unnecessary mudslinging against Anthony Pack has more to do with his own insecurities as a result of homophobia than any desire to report the news from Monroe county.
And just in case Mr. Smith decides to delete those tweets I made sure to take screenshots. It seems Mr. Smith is an avid retweeter and most of his feed are retweets with surprisingly sparse original thought. I will also include a few more from his feed which are atypical to most newspaper publishers since there are an abundance of misogynistic, Islamophobic, and racists tweets on his twitter feed. It also shouldn’t come as a surprise that Monsieur Davis appears to be an avid Ted Cruz fan.
The freedom of speech is a wonderful thing we all enjoy regardless of ideology or political views. I am not faulting Mr. Davis for his strong tea party stances even as I disagree with them, but as a newspaper publisher and editor in a town with only one newspaper you would hope that he would try and show a bit more restraint and not try to alienate people to this degree. More importantly I fault Mr. Davis for using his newspaper to try and have Mr. Pack fired simply because he doesn’t like gay people. Mr. Pack’s sexual proclivity and his private message to other consenting adult men is no business but his own.
Will Davis isn’t interested in reporting news, but rather a more insidious motivation based on prejudice. He doesn’t seem to care about whether Mr. Pack is doing a good job as a superintendent which is a story worth writing. He only seems to care about Mr. Pack’s romantic life and I find that very troubling for Forsyth’s only newspaper. I would find it troubling if they had ten newspapers but at least then people would have alternatives.
One wonders if the Monroe Crusader isn’t a more appropriate name for this sleazy rag than Monroe Reporter?
I’ll never purchase another MC Reporter again, too bad though, I always enjoyed that newspaper.
Not suprised!!!! Stop reading the crap long ago
Davis is as right wing as they come. You won;t find too many pictures of Davis because he is embarrassed of going bald. He tries to do that stupid comb over but isn’t fooling anyone. We all think it is funny because he is so vain. We need to start calling all the companies in Monroe county that advertise in the tea party newspaper and tell them we will boycott them if they continue to advertie with Davis and the Monroe County Reporter. Hit Davis where it counts in his wallet. Thank you for giving the sane people of Monroe county a voice. We are not all homophobic or crazy like Will Davis I promise you.
Great suggestion! I wish I had suggested a boycott in my article. I also hope people start canceling their subscriptions to his yellow journalism style of paper. I hope you guys can start a new paper that is fair to everyone and focuses on news.
Left-wing is okay, but right-wing is a bunch of bald eagles that need to be killed!? What is wrong with America is that media, such as this, gets folks upset and fired up!!!
We need to go back to Little House on the Prairie. Just men and woman working the farm land. No time to be liberal or conservative
Thank you so much for this article!!! The editor is nothing but a bully and he has ruined so many careers and families in the name of “journalism”. He needs to be run out of Monroe just as he was in Washington and White County. It is sickening and makes me embarrassed to say I’m from here.
Thanks Holly. I think that last commenter had a great suggestion. Call up businesses that advertise in his paper and let them know you are opposed to his paper and will boycott them until they remove ads from the Monroe County Reporter. Thanks to Amazon you can already buy nearly everything online so not hard to do and Macon is also not that far for shopping for companies that advertise in this Hate paper if alternatives are not in Monroe County. A boycott would hurt Davis more than anything.
More than anything I hope this causes the people in Monroe County to decide to create a brand new paper.
Yay! So long overdue! Was despairing of my fellow Monroe-Countians! How did we let this sanctimonious Dimwitt feed us his Hate-Mongering for so long?!?!?
Mr. Wood I agree with your article. Mr. Davis has turned our paper into smut. I think Mr. Pack’s personal business doesn’t need to be every bodies business. That was totally wrong.
Thanks Tanya. I hope my article helped.
Well, Mr. Wood, apparently you hit a nerve. When I shared your article to the paper FB page, it didn’t last long & was deleted…the truth will come out soon enough as to who orchestrated the entire charade…I don’t imagine his hand will be far from the pen. As a transplant to this county, as is Mr. Pack, I can assure you, it’s not an easy transition, straight or gay. Just not a welcoming place. Seems the story should have been who the unknown, unnamed e-mail sender is/was…guess we’ll have to wait on that one, but, don’t hold your breath! THAT would be responsible journalism. GREAT reporting on your part – THANK YOU for telling it like it REALLY is!
Thanks for the update Dianna. Davis can delete the link on his Facebook page all he wants, but word got out. Over 20,000 views of this page. Even Montel Williams on Twitter called Davis out for his homophobic “gay-stapo” tweet thanks to this article.
If I am not mistaken, isn’t Davis originally from Ohio or some other state near there? I hope enough people cancel their subscriptions to Monroe Reporter and enough advertisers also abandon it that Davis realizes that kind of yellow journalism has no place in Monroe County.
I don’t know Mr. Davis personally, so, I’m unsure where he’s from. The story now is he’s trying to turn it around by saying it wasn’t a gay issue, but, more the issue of whether or not county issued equipment was allegedly used to access the site. Sadly, the story is already in print that says nothing of the kind. Had that been the headline, very few would have had a problem with it. The BOE chairman & Mr. Pack himself were the ones who agreed to submit the equipment for search. That wasn’t prompted by Mr. Davis although, from what I hear, he is now trying to say it was the main point of his story. Anyone who reads the article can readily see NOTHING indicates Mr. Davis was reporting that as being the main issue. Whatever has gone on between the two, it’s evident it goes deeper than Mr. Pack being gay. It will certainly be interesting to see what the investigation results will show.
I worked under Mr. Pack the last year I taught in Monroe County and found him to be a very capable and professional administrator. If anyone knows Monroe County from an outsider’s perspective, I do. I taught high school at Mary Persons for 31 years, but I never lived in the county. I commuted from Macon, via 475 and I-75, and the reason I did was because of people like Will Davis. Monroe County has some nice people, but it isn’t a place known for open-mindedness or toleration. Most who live there are typical tea party types who are afraid of expressing any opinion that varies from GOP/Fox News talking points.
The worst day of my 31 years at Mary Persons occurred the day after Barack Obama was elected to the presidency in November 2008. The atmosphere at MPHS was downright funereal. Most of the teachers, office and lunchroom staff were in mourning. These were people I thought accepted me as their equal because after all, they were quick to talk about how “c”hristian they were. Well, on that Wednesday, I discovered that my being black mattered to them, a whole lot. They weren’t speaking to me and avoided looking at me. It was as if Obama’s election was something to be ashamed of, and because I’m also black, I was being held responsible for his winning the presidency. Some of the black students approached me quietly and told me that some other teachers were saying ugly things about Obama, and that they weren’t hiding it.
I’ll never forget the woman in the serving line in the lunchroom, and the way she looked at me, turned her eyes to slits, shook her head and glanced away from me. I saw the hatred toward People of Color in her eyes and mannerisms. Now, I knew this woman. I went through her lunch line everyday and we had a short chat every frigging day. She sold cakes to supplement her income, and I would buy them from her, not because I needed them (I’m diabetic,) but to help her out. None of this mattered after Obama won the presidency. I stopped going through her line, and after a few months, she “invited” me to return to her lunch line. I did, but I will never forget the way she revealed her true feelings to, and about, me. She showed me that in spite of what I had thought was a decent relationship between the two of us, to her, my race made a huge difference in her ability to accept me as a human being and her equal.
I was glad that the 2008-’09 school year was my last year working in Monroe County. I remember that shortly after I began working there in 1977, my dad offered to build a home for me on Pea Ridge Road. His plan was to build a home for himself and my mom, and one for me next to it. I told him that I never wanted to live in Monroe County. I knew soon after I started working there that Christianity was only something they used to justify their homophobia, hate, prejudice, bigotry, stereotyping, scapegoating, and discriminatory practices.
Davis has lot of supporters in Monroe County, and even if some of them know what he’s doing to Mr. Pack is wrong, they’ll never open their mouths to defend Mr. Pack, and that’s the thing Monroe Countians should be most ashamed of.
Thanks for your detailed and thoughtful comment. With your permission I would like to convert your comment into an article so that more people can read it. Many people miss comments below articles.
You have my permission to use it, Alan.
Left-wing is okay, but right-wing is a bunch of bald eagles that need to be killed!? What is wrong with America is that media, such as this, gets folks upset and fired up!!!
We need to go back to Little House on the Prairie. Just men and woman working the farm land. No time to be liberal or conservative