Earlier this year, national media outlets targeted Gulf Shores and Orange Beach to highlight how the public was handling the COVID-19 pandemic as the businesses were coming out of shutdown mode.
One report from CNN featured the network’s Gary Tuchmann showing crowded spots in Orange Beach and Gulf Shores and highlighted individuals that were not wearing masks at the beach. That drew the ire of Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed, who said it gave him “pause to think about” what might be coming his city’s way.
During an appearance on Mobile radio FM Talk 106.5’s “The Jeff Poor Show” on Monday, Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon maintained the media coverage was a “game,” and he dismissed what media pundits and Reed had said about his community.
“I’ll be quite honest with you — I don’t give a darn what the national media think,” he said. “I don’t care what the mayor of Montgomery thinks. It’s all a game for them. You know, the 24-hour news cycle is devastating this country. It’s all a game for them because everything is news now, and nothing is news. For them to come down here and act like that when they don’t know us, they don’t know what precautions — a guy walks on the beach, does an interview, walks off the beach and takes his mask off shows what a farce, what a fraud it all is.”
Kennon argued those visiting the beaches were exercising personal responsibility and urged listeners to reject the media by turning it off.
“We’re doing the best we can,” Kennon continued. “If you’re on the beach, if you’re in the sun, if you have a breeze, you’re with your group — we, for the most part, are doing a good job of keeping people separate. And we don’t have to keep them separate. For the most part, people are doing a good job of following the rules. There are exceptions, and when we see the exceptions, we take actions. But that report was a fake. It was a fraud. It really bothers me that we’ve let ourselves get sucked into letting the news media do that to us — not just Orange Beach, but do that to us as a country. We need to just turn it off — we really do just need to turn it off.”
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly and host of Mobile’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. on FM Talk 106.5.
