Beaufort Insider also appears to have conflict of interest in city elections
By Delayna Earley
The Island News
Last week’s Beaufort City Council meeting has put a spotlight on a local news organization and the future of its interactions with the city.
Beaufort’s City Manager Scott Marshall started his report to the Mayor and Council a little differently than he typically does during the Beaufort City Council meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 8.
He began his address with a statement to the city politicians and constituents explaining the events and reasoning that lead to his decision to direct the city staff to no longer interact with a recently formed news organization called the Beaufort Insider.
Addressing council
In his statement, Marshall alleges that local developer Graham Trask has repeatedly “attacked” and called into question Marshall’s integrity.
He said that Trask bullies others by “speaking half-truths and misinformation.”
Marshall also alleged that Trask, who has been vocal in his criticism of the city and has levied several lawsuits against the city to that effect, admitted to him while in his office one day that “baiting others on social media is a game to him.”
“It’s not a game to me. It’s my integrity. It’s my reputation. It’s my livelihood. It’s my life’s work,” Marshall said. “I am here because I want to serve people in the place that has been my home longer than any other place in my adult life. I have no other agenda.”
In the statement, Marshall proceeded to discuss several instances in which he feels Trask has attacked him and his commitment to do his job for the City of Beaufort.
Firstly, he said that Trask intentionally tried to drive a wedge between Marshall and members of City Council by posting that a “fatal flaw in [his] demeanor” caused the council to take notice.
He also mentioned when Trask allegedly called his leadership abilities into question when he declined “a conditional offer of financial assistance from a resident that the city could not legally accept” when discussing drainage issues and possible solutions in The Point neighborhood in downtown Beaufort.
His last example was to say that Trask “insinuated under [his] leadership [that] the police department mismanaged an investigation into allegations of missing evidence.”
In response during an interview with The Island News, Trask saidthat he thinks that Marshall’s statement in the Council meeting goes to prove his point that he is not fit for the role of city manager because of his “apparent lack of emotional intelligence.”
“Clearly I’ve gotten under his skin,” Trask said. “I stand by every accusation I have made as fact.”
Marshall said that as a member of the local government, his freedom of speech is limited, but “critics in the private sector have no such obligation to the truth and no restrictions on the claims they make.”
This is what, in his opinion, the Beaufort Insider has been taking advantage of “in a deliberate and concerted effort to discredit and disparage city council and staff.”
It was this, according to Marshall, that played heavily in his decision to instruct city staff to no longer engage with the Beaufort Insider outside of their legal obligations under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
What is the Beaufort Insider?
The Beaufort Insider is an online publication managed by editor Carrie Chappell that was established in early summer 2024.
Its first article, a letter addressed to the Beaufort community outlining its mission as a new online publication dedicated to “fact-based news,” was published on June 14.
On its website, the Insider says it is “dedicated to delivering accurate news that empowers citizens to make informed decisions and engage with our community.”
While only two people are listed as working for the website – Chappell, a Beaufort County School District employee and owner of Changing Tides Digital Marketing in Beaufort, is listed as the editor and Rachel Carper is listed as a contributor – the Beaufort Insider also invites members of the public to participate and contribute as well.
Rumors on social media have sparked members of the community to question if the Beaufort Insider is owned by Graham Trask and not Carrie Chappell, but in interviews with The Island News, both Chappell and Trask deny that he has had any involvement with the organization beyond offering advice when it is solicited and being a fan in sharing its postings on social media.
“When I had the idea for the Beaufort Insider, I spoke to Graham to get his thoughts as I did in speaking to lots of different people,” Chappell said.
The Beaufort Insider’s articles and editorials to date have mostly centered around politics in the City of Beaufort, while on occasion branching out to cover or comment on county politics.
A conflict of interest?
As mentioned, in addition to Chappell’s work with the Beaufort Insider and the BCSD, she also runs a digital marketing company called Changing Tides Digital Marketing.
It is through this company that she is being paid to work on campaigns for local candidates Josh Gibson and Julie Crenshaw, two of the four people who are currently running for two seats on Beaufort City Council.
And Chappell has been involved with a third candidate running for City office in this election.
Mayor Phil Cromer previously utilized Chappell’s services to help with his 2023 campaign in the special election for the mayoral seat after former Mayor Stephen Murray resigned, but he said he did not hire her to work on this campaign because she was already working on two others, so instead he hired Carper.
“The things that I put out in [the] Beaufort Insider are fact-based. I put links to all the documents [in the story] that back up what I’m saying,” said Chappell, who said she hasn’t covered the election much. “… If I produce an opinion piece, I make it very clear that it’s an opinion piece. I am aware of people’s concern about a conflict of interest and I am diligent about avoiding that conflict of interest with what I put out.”
Under almost any circumstances, a journalist reporting on an election in which he or she was working with one or more of the candidates would be considered a clear conflict of interest.
Editorial employees of The Associated Press (AP) are expected to be “scrupulous” in avoiding any political activity. It doesn’t matter if they cover politics or not.
“They may not run for political office or accept political appointment; nor may they perform public relations work for politicians or their groups,” according to the AP’s web page on conflicts of interest. “Under no circumstances should they donate money to political organizations or political campaigns. They should use great discretion in joining or making contributions to other organizations that may take political stands.”
The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) says on its website that political involvement is a simple “no.”
“Don’t do it. Don’t get involved. Don’t contribute money, don’t work in a campaign, don’t lobby, and especially, don’t run for office yourself,” the SPJ says.
“People are gonna think what they’re gonna think,” Chappell said.
Gibson told The Island News that he is running his own campaign, and she is providing assistance with things like signs and his website.
“My message is entirely my own,” Gibson said.
The Beaufort Insider recently had to cancel a political forum scheduled to be held at Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park in downtown Beaufort on Wednesday, Oct. 16, when four of the six candidates running for a City of Beaufort political office declining to attend.
Mayoral candidates Josh Scallate, who currently sits on City Council, and Cromer both stated that they were not going to participate because they felt it could be a conflict of interest considering Chappell’s work on two of the candidates’ campaigns.
Cromer also expressed concern that the forum might have been unnecessarily antagonistic in nature given the demeanor of some of the articles that the Beaufort Insider has posted.
“I first ran to try and calm or cool down the temperature of politics in the city,” Cromer said. “But right now with this campaign, everything’s ramped back up and people are taking sides and their taking shots. I just don’t think that’s appropriate.”
The other two candidates declining to participate were current City Council members Neil Lipsitz and Mitch Mitchell, both of whom told The Island News that they had a prior engagement to participate in a panel at the University of South Carolina Beaufort.
Ultimately, a post was made on the Beaufort Insider’s site on Monday, Oct. 14, stating that the forum would be canceled due to lack of participation from several candidates, specifically naming Scallate, Lipsitz and Mitchell.
Chappell said in an interview that the point of the forum for her was to get all six candidates together on one stage so they could participate in a true public forum, and she was disappointed that it was not going to happen.
Gibson said he didn’t necessarily have a problem with the Beaufort Insider hosting the forum.
“We’re going back to more of a time where advocacy journalism is more, [or] as least as prominent as what we would call neutral journalism,” Gibson said.
Crenshaw did not respond to a request for comment.
Moving forward
As of now, the City of Beaufort employees have been instructed by Marshall to not engage with the Beaufort Insider.
Marshall said his statement that he is not concerned with the Beaufort Insider writing critical articles about the city, but that he made his decision “because of the unprofessional actions and blogs consistently demonstrating [an] inability to distinguish between fact and fiction and the false accusations made by incorrectly connecting dots.”
While Marshall said that his decision to speak out was made in part because he felt his integrity and livelihood were being attacked, Chappell said that she has chosen to not respond publicly as she is not looking to make anything personal.
“I stand behind everything that I have published in Beaufort Insider,” Chappell said.
By law, the city will continue to respond appropriately to requests made under FOIA, but they will not be answering questions levied by those working for the online publication, according to Marshall.
Not all of the members of City Council agree with this approach, but they can see why he made the statement.
“I’m for open government and transparency,” Cromer said. “So, my feeling or take on any of this, and I spoke with Scott about this, is that regardless of who it is, you may or may not like the person, but if they request something we have to give it to them. We are a public body and its public information. Just give it to them and let the chips fall where they may.”
That said, Cromer did say he understood why Scott addressed council and he sympathized with him.
“I think he felt like his reputation had been besmirched,” Cromer said. But if somebody had done that to me, I think I would have just kept quiet.”
Other members of council and candidates hoping to be elected to Council in November shared similar sentiments by saying they understand both sides of it, but at the end of the day, they believe every citizen should be able to ask a question of the local government and get an answer.
Trask said he sees it as a violation of the freedom of the press, but South Carolina Press Association lawyer Jay Bender said that while governments are required to respond to requests for information pursuant to FOIA, they are under no obligation to make comments to the press.
But he did say that was not advisable.
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
