TCPalm shows poor editorial judgment with ‘algae’ photo

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but in some cases, one word can be just plain wrong.

Case in point is recent reporting on high bacteria levels in Treasure Coast beaches, particularly a story featured on the front page of Thursday’s Stuart News, also featured prominently in TCPalm.com.

“Brevard is the only local county where it’s safe to swim at all the beaches right now,” writes reporter Cheryl Smith. “Palm Beach is the worst. And the Treasure Coast is a mixed bag.”

The problem is not necessarily the story itself – which outlines 13 avoid-water advisories in effect throughout a five-County area from unsafe bacteria levels. It also touched on how President Donald Trump’s proposed budget threatens the Florida Healthy Beaches Program, which tests beaches every couple of weeks, more often during advisories.

At issue the photo going with the front page of the print version.

It’s a file photo of the signs warning of high bacteria levels – and algae bloom – at Leighton Park.

Algae blooms? Who said anything about algae blooms?

The Florida Department of Health put the region under warnings for enteric (fecal) bacteria and sewage in the St. Lucie River, not blue-green algae blooms.

Of course, on the online version, at TCPalm.com, uses an entirely different photo – with a much more accurate warning: “High bacteria – avoid contact with the water.”

Along the Treasure Coast, algae blooms can be a touchy subject.

In summer 2016, the St. Lucie River faced blooms holding 28 species of blue-green algae, according to a study released in May by the U.S. Geological Survey. The situation became such where Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency in Martin, St. Lucie and Palm Beach counties.

Algae bloom also helped the state accelerate a purchase of 60,000 acres of valuable sugarcane land south of Lake Okeechobee for a reservoir to store fresh water, which is expected to filter out nutrients and empty the water into Florida Bay.

And algae blooms have also been a source a great deal of reporting TCPalm, which is acutely aware how contentious the issue can be.

Knowing that was Eve Samples – the paper’s opinion editor – who acknowledged it was wrong.

When several readers, called out the error, Samples responded through a Facebook comment: “I understand why this photo concerned you. You’ll notice the caption states ‘file photo,’ which indicates it’s from our archives and not current. With that said we need to be more careful about which file photos we choose to illustrate stories. This was not a good choice, and I just spoke to several of our staffers about being more careful about file photo choices in the future. We will redouble our efforts.”

With news photos, they can go one of two ways; either neutral and objective or (with just the right editorial placement) promoting a point of view.

In the case of “algae,” it’s clear on which side that image fell.

Here is the image that should have run in the paper, and did run on TCPalm.com: