Democracy is in trouble if Miami officials brush aside reporters and ignore questions
Editor’s note: After this column was published, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez canceled Friday’s meeting with the Miami Herald’s leadership team. His director of communications, Stephanie Severino, said: “After reading the tone and tenor of your inflammatory article, it is clear that you and your organization are acting in bad faith.”
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Our elected leaders have been given the highest level of responsibility by our community. At the Miami Herald, we take very seriously our duty to hold those elected officials accountable.
Our journalists work tirelessly to provide the news that matters most to South Florida, and we have more than 100 journalists serving this mission daily.
For the better part of the past six months, three of our reporters — Sarah Blaskey, Joey Flechas and Tess Riski — have been pursuing answers to important questions from Mayor Francis Suarez.
How did his net worth increase 14-fold, from $245,015 to $3,400,000, after he was elected mayor in 2017? Who paid for his 2022 trip to the World Cup in Qatar? Who treated him to the most exclusive seats at the Formula One races two years in a row, how much did he pay for those tickets, and has he discussed city business with his private benefactors?
These reporters have sent 55 requests for comment from the mayor either through his city of Miami communication directors, the spokesperson for his presidential campaign or both. More than half of these requests were ignored.
The team submitted 62 requests for public records to the city of Miami under Chapter 119 of the Florida Statutes. Less than half have been fulfilled, and the city has taken no action on 20. The Herald has had to involve attorneys at least half a dozen times to receive even the most basic of records from the mayor’s office. Several others are being appealed by Herald attorneys, including one in which the city quoted the Herald a fee of $21,075.61 to process a request for calendar invites sent or received by the mayor.
The Herald now has at least 27 unanswered questions pending with the mayor’s office.
We believe our community deserves to know the answers.
Blaskey and Flechas attended a city budget meeting on Sept. 9 in hopes of getting some of those answers. The mayor tried to take Blaskey’s phone out of her hands as she recorded his reaction to questions outside his office at City Hall.
Any kind of physical interaction with our reporters is not acceptable. Asking tough questions for our community is their job.
The mayor has since misrepresented to other news outlets his willingness to speak with our reporters, with his office issuing a statement saying the mayor has “repeatedly responded” to the Miami Herald’s questions and that Saturday’s confrontation occurred after he answered “several questions on the topic.” In fact, Suarez answered none of our questions that day — until our reporters confronted him with a camera rolling.
During that confrontation, the mayor on camera told Blaskey and Flechas to request a meeting through his communications director. Our reporters did so, that day. Communications Director Stephanie Severino said she would get back to them. Blaskey has followed up this week but still has no appointment.
Mayor Suarez has agreed to meet with the leadership of the Miami Herald this week. We hope to have a constructive conversation and move forward.
We can all agree that our democracy is based on an open channel between the free press and elected officials, from the White House to Miami City Hall.
Alex Mena is the executive editor of the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald.
This story was originally published September 20, 2023 at 1:56 PM.
