IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR, EMPLOYEES ARE EVALUATED, GRADED AND DISMISSED FOR POOR PERFORMANCE. WHY SHOULDN’T GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES BE HELD TO THOSE SAME STANDARDS?
The City of Myrtle Beach attacked MyrtleBeachSC news once again today. It is the latest attack among many over the past, few years.
A post by City of Myrtle Beach Social Media Contractor Gordon Hirsch attacked our news organization directly on Hirsch’s own personal Facebook page. Hirsch made certain to send our owner, David Hucks, a friend request just after making his post.
The post stated that MyrtleBeachSC news’ owner, David Hucks, is not a journalist and should not be allowed to post news online as he is not qualified.
Hirsch made the post just after MyrtleBeachSC news covered the concerns of 11 Myrtle Beach city merchants, who question the competency of City Manager John Pedersen. That article can be seen here: https://myrtlebeachsc.com/after-commissioning-new-study-city-managers-competence-questioned/
Merchants are discussing meeting with City Hall this coming Fall to discuss the decline of the city over the past few years in regards to the overall competence and integrity of the City Manager.
This is the latest in a myriad of attacks on our news site, our owner, and our team over the past several years. The first attack occurred on the very morning MyrtleBeachSC news informed the city we would be publishing our initial article concerning Beach Ocean Bacteria spikes at local swashes. MyrtleBeachSC news was the first news organization to break these articles now widely covered by mainstream media.
After weeks of talking to City Spokesperson Mark Kruea and minutes before we informed him we would be publishing our 10 a.m. article, a vicious DDOS attack was launched against all of our servers, shutting down our news site for 3 days.
A distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack occurs when multiple systems flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system, usually one or more web servers. Such an attack is often the result of multiple compromised systems (for example, a botnet) flooding the targeted system with traffic and shutting down the organization’s website(s). In this instance, we were required to build a completely new and more encrypted, secure server.
Afterwards our website began to be attacked ongoing with new and improved viruses being placed inside our systems that destroyed the content on our pages with a mysterious black cat sitting on our page content so that our readers could not see it.
We were reported to FACEBOOK ongoing by Hirsch, the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce and other city insiders as Fake News.
THE MYRTLE BEACH AREA CHAMBER SPENT OVER $1 MILLION PROMOTING THIS FAKE NEWS INCLUDING THIS VIDEO
Brad Dean told local news at the time of this attack, “We [MBACC] will spend whatever tax payer monies necessary to get the word out.”
The word, in reference here, was that Myrtle Beach had no water quality issues as we had reported and that MyrtleBeachSC news was Fake News.
In later years, by agents we have not determined, our owner’s cell phone was tapped [with a listening device] for a period of 11 months with our owner unaware. A listening device was also placed on a telephone pole located a short distance from our owner’s home. Some agent or persons were listening to every word spoken in the home.
Our owner’s “in home” computer systems were also continually shut down with service interruptions from a variety of viruses sent to his cable provider’s “in home” boxes and his personal computer.
When he complained, in emails, to the city, our owner was labeled a “conspiracy nut” in later campaign postings by the campaign managers of an incumbent candidate in office.
When all of these efforts failed, former MBACC C.E.O. Brad Dean lied about our news organization and our owner to the people of Puerto Rico. We documented that bizarre news conference held by Noticel News of Puerto Rico here: https://myrtlebeachsc.com/brad-dean-faces-questions-from-puerto-rico-press-blames-myrtlebeachsc-com/
HOLDING THEM ACCOUNTABLE
We ask our readers, which local news organization has made the strongest and most continuous effort at holding local governments accountable?
