Miller promotion shows Mangum’s lack of concern about FAMU’s credibility with press

Tweet by Associated Press Reporter Gary Fineout

The FAMU administration’s ongoing efforts to use secrecy as a way to rebuff the press have only made the problem of negative publicity worse. Now, the official who has been at the center of the poor media relations has become the top staffer in the President’s Office.

Last week, FAMU announced that Jimmy Miller would be the new chief-of-staff to President Elmira Mangum. He was a housing authority executive before Mangum appointed him to be the vice-president of communications and external relations at FAMU in 2014. Miller will supervise the new head of the Office of Communications as part of the recent administrative shuffling on the campus.

Miller’s “leadership” of the Office of Communications has been a recurring source of embarrassing news for FAMU.

Back at a Board of Trustees (BOT) Special Committee on Governance meeting on July 21, then-BOT Chairman Rufus Montgomery asked why the version of a May 22, 2015 “President’s Notes” document with information about the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering that was sent to the BOT was different from the version of the document that was sent to the media. Miller wrote a long excuse to the BOT on July 24 that said the differences between the two documents were an unintentional error and that his office would send the correct document to the press “immediately.”

WFSU reported in August that the FAMU Office of Communications had hired an individual named Santoras D. Gamble to a job that pays him $75,000 per year. According to WFSU, “Gamble was convicted of Conspiracy to Defraud the United States, a felony.”

Miller also fumbled through a discussion with reporters after Mangum decided to dodge questions from the press at a press conference she called on October 29. One reporter called him on the facts about Mangum’s own schedule as another reporter tried to hold back his laughter.

The Office of Communications led by Miller then organized a short, 45-minute media availability with Mangum the next week with restrictions that the news director of WTXL-27 in Tallahassee said were “unacceptable.”

“As a news organization, we did not feel the conditions in which Florida A&M University dictated today’s interview opportunity to be acceptable,” said WTXL-27 News Director, III M. David Lee III. “If Dr. Mangum wishes to sit down with WTXL, with whoever we choose as the reporter, for an open and frank conversation about the university, we are more than willing to set that up. However, asking a television station not to videotape the interview, trying to handpick who can do the interview and the initially limiting reporter questions to just one, is unacceptable.”

The promotion of Miller shows that Mangum still isn’t serious about treating the press with professionalism or finding close advisers who aren’t “yes”-people.