A left-leaning outlet quietly removed Republican Sen. John Kennedy’s (R-LA) op-ed from its newspaper because of so-called “inflammatory” language.
USA Today took down a published article written by Kennedy on protecting women’s sports from transgender athletes, claiming that his column did not meet the paper’s ethical guidelines.
Kennedy said he was made aware that his op-ed, titled “Is transgender inclusion more important than women’s sports?” was removed from the company’s sites until he was informed of broken links to the article. The links took readers to an “error” page.
Gannet Opinion Editor and Vice President of Standards and Ethics Michael McCarter told Fox News Digital that the editorial team removed the column from its website because Kennedy did not take the opportunity to revise his language to adhere to the paper’s standards.
“Men and women don’t compete for the same reasons,” Kennedy wrote in his article. “Yet transgender activists want athletic institutions to ignore these obvious physical differences so transgender athletes can feel included, even if it hurts biological girls in the process. Many fair-minded people reject the idea that women and girls who work hard to develop their athletic talents must sacrifice their opportunities, privacy, and safety to promote gender activism. I’m one of them.”
The Republican senator accused USA Today of being the “speech police.”
Drunk on certainty and virtue, they think they are our moral teacher. This attitude is why so many Americans have lost confidence in the media. The media is not going to win that trust back until they return to neutrality instead of advocacy," Kennedy said. “Most people don’t support allowing biological men to participate in women’s sports because they think that will bastardize sports, skew the results, and hurt women. Other people disagree," he continued. "Gannett should simply report the two sides and not try to silence the position it disagrees with." Via Fox News Digital.
Kennedy’s office said that the senator’s piece received no notes or pushback from the editorial team upon submitting it.
Misty Castile, the executive editor of the Shreveport Times, said that there were “concern[s]” about the absence of references in Kennedy's article. However, Fox News Digital confirmed that the op-ed contained 17 citations.
The newspaper company also claimed that the terms "biological male" and "biological female" go "against our standards,” citing the Associated Press Stylebook, which states that these words "are sometimes used by opponents of transgender rights to portray sex as more simplistic than scientists assert."