Jeff Bergosh

Jeff Bergosh is the Escambia County School Board representative for District 1. He was elected in 2006, filling the seat vacated by his brother Gary Bergosh, who was elected to a judgeship. He came under fire in 2007 for posting comments on the pnj.com messageboards using a pseudonym. Bergosh's posts were mostly centered on defending the quality of education in the Escambia County public schools. Some of the posts were critical of opponents, and in one post out of 135 total Bergosh named himself in the third person.

Bergosh and his wife Sally have three children: Tori, Nicholas and Brandon.

Education & career

Bergosh is a 1986 Graduate of Pensacola High School. After high school, Bergosh moved out west to attend college. He earned an Associates of Arts degree from Grossmont College (El Cajon, California) in 1990 and a B.A. from San Diego State University in 1994. Before entering politics, Bergosh had a ten-year career as a facilities management specialist, retail business operator, and he had spent about 1 1/2 years working as a cultural resource manager at Naval Air Station Pensacola. When his brother decided not to seek reelection, Bergosh said he was asked by Superintendent Jim Paul to seek the office. He was elected on September 5, 2006 with 5,110 votes — about twice as many as his closest rival, Todd Leonard.

PNJ forum Incident

On October 4, 2007, the Pensacola News Journal published an article by reporter Sara Rabb that revealed Bergosh had been posting comments on pnj.com under the pseudonym "Godzilla." Confronted by Rabb, Bergosh denied being Godzilla. Facing the fact that the PNJ had utilized their own internal IT information to learn the true identity of Godzilla, an "off the record" admission was given to Rabb. Against Bergosh's wishes, Rabb and the PNJ ran with the story and were criticized heavily for doing so. The Columbia Journalism Review questioned the PNJ's tactics used to make this story using in-house IT information . Bergosh confirmed the online identity during an October 8 "IN Your Head Radio" interview on AM 1620.

Bergosh was criticized via several subsequent articles, editorials, and cartoons in the PNJ for a number of the comments he made using a pseudonym in the daily paper's anonymous forum. All of the forum posts presented in the PNJ articles were devoid of context and therefore the true meanings could not be discerned. Among his posts were claims that schools in the poverty stricken District 3 were a statistical drag on the rest of the district's grade as a whole. This post was made in defense of Escambia County's school system when compared to other nearby districts that do not have the same social and poverty issues to contend with. In another post, the subject of which was discipline and attendance issues among 16 and 17 year old students in the district who had not yet completed middle school that did not want to be in school and who were tremendous discipline problems , Bergosh suggested they not be compelled to stay. In that post Bergosh stated that governments should "do away with compulsory education beyond grade 8. … Build more prisons and get ready for the influx, but let's keep school a positive environment for students who WANT to come to school!!" Bergosh was critical of teachers' unions for "roadblocking districts every step of the way" referring to the local teacher's unions threatened litigation over the implementation of the state approved and funded teacher merit pay plan. In one (1) post out of 135, Bergosh referred to himself in the third person during a debate over merit pay for teachers, a passionate volley meant to let people in the community know that 2.1 million dollars in teacher bonus money was about to be voted "out" of Pensacola and back to Tallahassee: "I know we can count on Board member Bergosh to be there and vote to keep the bonus money here in Pensacola. I know he is not going to genuflect, bow down and kiss the union ring, and give the union what they want." When the School Board voted 4-1 against the existing merit pay plan, Godzilla said he could hear their "spines breaking in unison."

Andy Marlette's cartoon & winning caption

Bergosh's cartoon response

Bergosh accused the News Journal of "outing" his identity on what he had believed was a safe outlet for anonymous opinion: "When the Pensacola News Journal created an anonymous forum, encouraging the use of pseudonyms, as to let people take down their guards and speaking in a frank manner regarding political ideas and thoughts, I jumped at the opportunity." The publication pointed out that their website's terms of use reserved "the right to identify you as the author of any of your postings or submissions by name, email address or screen name, as we deem appropriate." Hundreds of forum posters weighed in on the issue and it was disclosed that the original PNJ forum sign up disclaimer, which had indicated that personal information would never be disclosed to any third party, had been switched to a new 7 page terms of service in March of 2007 to a policy which allowed for the release of any information the paper deemed appropriate. Many forum posters understood that the new Gannett Terms of Service actually amounted to a "no-privacy" policy. The consensus among the posters was that the PNJ had been deceptive about how the new terms of service had been implemented. Bergosh asserted that he "never divulged any 'in-house' secrets or committed ANY crime" and that the left-leaning newspaper had engaged in "yellow journalism" as retribution for his conservative opinions, prompting him to "fight for my right to freedom of speech." In addition to these reasons, Bergosh pointed out that he felt that his scathing response to Richard A. Schneider's editorial from August 12, 2007 may have provoked the PNJ to dig up the information from their IT department to identify him in the newspaper.

Hostilities continued when the News Journal held a contest asking readers to submit captions for a cartoon of Bergosh wearing a Godzilla costume. (The winning caption said, "All the School Board costumes were taken!") Bergosh countered by offering alternate captions critical of the newspaper's online policy (for example, "Deception is at the core of 'anonymous' blogs!!") and drawing a caricature of editor Dick Schneider:

These PNJ guys have had me on the front page twice, 4 editorials, and the “cartoon” has been up for 2 weeks!! These guys have given me more coverage this last month than Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or their #1 hero, Al Gore, inventor of the internet and recent Nobel Peace Prize winner!! What a strange October this has been!! … So I put together my own little “cartoon contest”— knowing I have nowhere near the resources, time, nor the “need” to create news at the level of the PNJ. But, this is still rather humorous, in my opinion. I asked around town, at the Waterfront Rescue Mission, at UWF, At Happy Hour, and at my Mensa club meeting-- and came up with quite a few ideas for the caption, with the one in the final cartoon being deemed “the winner.”

His cartoon depicted Schneider outside a "House of Voodoo" sticking pins into a Godzilla doll and yelling, "MOMMY!! Your dumb idea is not WORKING!!"