USA Today is owned by Gannett and their newspapers in Louisiana suddenly deleted an article by Senator John Kennedy on “trans athletes” without even notifying him.
When asked about it they claimed the op-ed did not meet their “ethical guidelines” and that it did not “treat people with respect.”
Kennedy was the one who discovered the deletion:
Kennedy’s op-ed, which received no notes from Gannett editors upon its submission according to his office, was featured on the website of the Gannett-owned Shreveport Times, and reposted on Lafayette’s The Daily Advertiser, Houma’s The Courier, Thibodaux’s The Daily Comet, Alexandria’s The Town Talk, Monroe’s The News-Star, Opelousas’ Daily World, and Gonzales’ Weekly Citizen, all of which also fall under Gannett’s USA TODAY umbrella.
However, by May 14, Kennedy’s office noticed that the links to his op-ed were broken. Posts on X from The Daily Advertiser and Houma Today sharing the op-ed took readers to an error message; the links now bear the language about not meeting editorial standards.
Emails reviewed by Fox News Digital showed Kennedy’s office inquiring about the broken links and was told by its point of contact, a reporter for Gannett’s Lousiana’s papers, it would be investigated. But after not getting a formal response, his office sent another follow-up email on May 20.
“The editors took it down after determining that it didn’t meet the company’s standards because of some inflammatory speech,” the reporter told Kennedy’s office.
The reporter then connected Kennedy’s office to Misty Castile, who serves as the executive editor of the Shreveport Times.
In phone conversations with Kennedy’s office, Castile blamed the op-ed’s publishing on “process flaws” and said there were “people above my head involved in this as well,” according to a source familiar with the matter.
Castile claimed there was a “concern” about the lack of citations in Kennedy’s piece despite the fact that the op-ed reviewed by Fox News Digital had 17.
In a follow-up email viewed by Fox News Digital, Castile walked back the citations claim, telling Kennedy’s office the citations “were not visible to us then” but went on to share what “our standards department” had told her.
Kennedy had used an analogy of an NBA star identifying as a child and joining a youth basketball team, pointing out how the NBA star would dominate and be unstoppable by the middle school-aged children. That’s what triggered the leftists who run Gannett. Well, that and his use of ‘biological male’:
According to the email, the standards department took issue with Kennedy’s Zion Williamson analogy comparing men competing in women’s sports to the NBA player identifying as a young child competing against other children, telling his office that “mocking how someone identifies is not acceptable.” Williamson stars for Kennedy’s home-state New Orleans Pelicans.
They also claimed Kennedy’s use of the terms “biological male” and “biological female” goes “against our standards,” claiming they were “loaded language” and citing the Associated Press Stylebook, which alleges such terms “are sometimes used by opponents of transgender rights to portray sex as more simplistic than scientists assert.”
“Should the Senator wish to resubmit the editorial without the loaded language, we would be happy to consider it,” Castile wrote.
What a load of garbage. There is nothing wrong with the analogy and the use of “biological male” is absolutely factual.
This is just an example of Kennedy getting censored because Gannett didn’t like his opinion.