- December 4, 2025
The Palm Coast City Council was asked by a former council candidate to remove city advertising from local online news service FlaglerLive.com over an article about Charlie Kirk.
Former Palm Coast City Council candidate Andrew Werner said the city needs to pull its advertising after FlaglerLive and its editor Pierre Tristam wrote an article that was “extreme and divisive” following Kirk’s assassination on Sept. 10 at a Utah college. Werner, who did not mention FlaglerLive by name, said he supports the “blog’s” freedom of the press and first amendment rights, but had an issue with the city being associated with the website.
“I do not support my tax dollars going towards this,” Werner said.
Though Werner did not mention a specific article from FlaglerLive, one article published in the aftermath of Kirk’s assassination said Kirk played an essential role re-normalizing "nationalist Christian extremism."
“Condemning the Kirk assassination without qualifications is essential, as is condemning any assassination,” the article reads. “But it is possible to condemn the assassination and still condemn the ideas he stood for, to decry the flags at half-mast for so-called values hardly distinguishable from those of Proud Boys or those of the predator-felon in the White House.”
Our advertising doesn't imply we're in agreement or endorsing any editorial content produced by any of these outlets."
– LAUREN JOHNSTON, Palm Coast acting city manager
Palm Coast advertises with local media, including the Palm Coast Observer, FlaglerLive and WNZF, to reach a larger audience for government events and messages, Acting City Manager Lauren Johnston said. So far in 2025, FlaglerLive has received around $6,000 for advertising.
“Our advertising doesn't imply we're in agreement or endorsing any editorial content produced by any of these outlets,” Johnston said.
Werner asked his District 3 representative, David Sullivan, to make a motion for the city to stop its advertising with FlaglerLive if “you like me are concerned about our tax dollars being connected to this type of divisive rhetoric.”
Sullivan called the Kirk articles “disgraceful” but said he did not agree that stopping advertising would be the right thing to do.
Mayor Mike Norris called FlaglerLive “a blog,” and not real media. He asked the council if anyone would motion to remove the advertising.
“I believe in the freedom of press and the freedom of speech, but as we've been learning in the last week or so, we don't have to spend money with that organization or anything like that,” Norris said.
The council did not agree that was the best course of action, though. Vice Mayor Theresa Carli Pontieri issued a word of caution and said pulling the advertising would be “a bad policy decision.”
“My concern,” she said, “is that the pendulum always swings to the other side.”
What would stop future council members, with different viewpoints, from deciding not to advertise in places they disagree with, she said, limiting the public's access to important information.
Where does that stop?”
– TY MILLER, Palm Coast Council member
“I don't know that we should not advertise based on not agreeing with a viewpoint,” she said. “Love it or hate it, FlaglerLive does reach a lot of people.”
Councilman Ty Miller agreed, adding that stopping the advertising based on content would be “somewhat incompatible with Charlie's ideals” of not censoring a message. He also said it would also be difficult to make “decisions based on our opinion about other people’s opinions.”
“And then,” he said, “where does that stop?”
