Board of Directors member for the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, and local restaurant owner, Larry Bond went nuclear on social media this past Friday. His attack was personal and aimed at our publisher stating, “ENOUGH!!! David L Hucks The type of reporting you keep putting out is what hurts our business, our property values, and our tourism.”
His entire post was almost a page long.
We shared Bond’s post on the Facebook Group EMPOWERING HORRY COUNTY. Please note Empowering Horry County is a residents only group. Elected officials, high level local bureaucrats, Downtown Redevelopment Corporation Employees and Board Members, and Myrtle Beach Area Chamber Board And Staff are not allowed in this group. All residents can click the picture below to see Bond’s post.
MyrtleBeachSC news focuses its mission on reporting about local government accountability. We do investigative journalism spotlighting Myrtle Beach City, Surfside Beach, and Horry County governments. While it is true, we have largely only reported positive news on North Myrtle Beach, our investigations have shown that North Myrtle Beach is well managed, pro-active and increasingly leads the way on the Grand Strand. Our coverage of Pawleys Island has only been positive as well.
However, we agree, our coverage of Myrtle Beach city government has not been complimentary. According to Columbia based, FITS NEWS
#SCTourism: Troubling Data, Summer of 2018 Myrtle Beach business is off. We certainly understand how a down peak season business cycle creates concern among local merchants.
Is our ongoing reporting on Myrtle Beach city government the reason Mr. Bond’s business is off, however? We asked him in the thread beneath his post.
Mr. Bond said it is hard to calculate what the effect of our articles were. We note that our articles are read by approximately 40,000 Horry County local residents weekly.
We also note the following:
FEBRUARY 25, 2018
Viral Video seen by 105 million views, 310 thousand comments, 1.8 million shares. The U.S. Census Bureau states that the population of the United States in 2017 was 325 million. This 2018 video reached the equivalent of one third of all U.S. residents.
For those who do not believe Social Media has any impact on news, please note that this video was also picked up by over 60,000 traditional news agencies world wide. You can verify that by simply Googling: McDonalds Homeless Man Myrtle Beach.
MyrtleBeachSC news wrote several articles defending the downtown business owner of McDonalds. We did not defend the city, however. We were told by store management that MBPD would be called, drop by and leave. The pan handler would then return to harass drive through customers once again. It was a repeating pattern caused by the under-reported homeless issues in Myrtle Beach.
MAY 16, 2018 VIRAL VIDEO WMBF News – Shooting Downtown Myrtle Beach
791, 754 Facebook Views. This story was also picked up and ran nationwide by many traditional news media operations.
JUST IN – @aaron_e30 posted this shocking video to Twitter of a man shooting at another man in downtown Myrtle Beach. WARNING: Video does contain graphic language
Southeastern and Northeastern Americans are still processing the social content put online by Bubba Hinson one year ago Summer 2017. Mr. Bond and his insiders may have short-term memories, Amercica doe not.
BUBBA HINSON Bubba Hinson was live.
Myrtle Beach Shooting LIVE
4,417,115 Views 103K Shares
This Father’s Day shooting was followed by City Manager John Pedersen, the 2017 Mayor and City Council putting barricades along the boulevard for much of the peak Summer season for the entire visiting population of Myrtle Beach to witness.
OCEAN BACTERIA TRADITIONAL NEWS STORIES
We could fill pages with the out of market, feeder city news articles covering this issue weekly. It is not just these traditional news articles, however. Once published, these news agencies then share these articles on Social Media. The comments found under these articles are not flattering. Residents throughout America then share those articles to their neighborhood friends.
Local businessman Steve Taylor commented on this same thread that some articles are about advisories in North Myrtle Beach. What Taylor missed is that during these same weeks, Myrtle Beach has multiple LONG TERM DHEC advisory areas with high bacteria levels. Long term advisory areas are not required to be reported by DHEC. That is the very reason MyrtleBeachSC news often reports on those areas specifically. We believe the LONG TERM advisory rating that the City of Myrtle Beach has been able to negotiate with DHEC is a slight of hand used to control the flow of news information.
THEN WHY DOES LARRY BOND BELIEVE OUR 40,000 LOCAL READERSHIP IS KILLING HIS BUSINESS?
In that same thread, Mayor Bethune posted, “It’s going to take all of us working together to stop him”
Bethune’s comments were aimed at silencing our publisher and our news agency.
Mayor Bethune actually believes a key role for her as Mayor is to work with the community in silencing a privately owned, local news agency doing investigative journalism on how well the City of Myrtle Beach is managed.
Dave, Seth, and David will cover this topic in detail on Wednesday’s 1 p.m Wednesday Watercooler LiveStream. We encourage all Myrtle Beach residents to watch. It will be aired at FACEBOOK.COM/SCMYRTLEBEACH. You can be assured elected city leaders will be watching.
*Editor’s note: The Freedom Action Network is a state-wide agency dedicated to Empowering Local Residents to take back the management and control of local communities, ending the current rule of Corporate/Government insider circles which largely only exist to serve one another.