On May 11, several Louisiana newspapers owned by USA Today’s parent company Gannett, including the Shreveport Times, ran an editorial from Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) titled “Is transgender inclusion more important than women’s sports?”
By May 15, when you click the link to the editorial on the Shreveport Times, The Daily Advertiser, The Courier, The Daily Comet, The Town Talk, The News-Star, Daily World, and Weekly Citizen, the headline reads “Content removed: did not meet editorial standards” and the same message is the only text left in the body of the post.
According to Fox News Digital, Kennedy’s office inquired about the removal of the op-ed initially told by a Gannett reporter that “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.”
His office then discussed the removal with Shreveport Times executive editor Misty Castile, who initially told them there was a “concern” about a lack of citations in the piece. Per Fox News, Castile later told the office that the key issue was an analogy in Kennedy’s editorial that equated New Orleans Pelicans star Zion Williamson competing against young boys with transgender athletes competing against athletes of their chosen sex.
The newspaper also reportedly said that the usage of the terms “biological male” and “biological female” goes “against our standards. Referring to transgender people with those terms conflate sex and gender and “are sometimes used by opponents of transgender rights to portray sex as more simplistic than scientists assert,” the paper reportedly told Kennedy’s office.
“Should the Senator wish to resubmit the editorial without the loaded language, we would be happy to consider it,” Castile wrote to Kennedy’s office.
As of the time of this writing, the editorial remains removed.
“They think they are 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 told Fox News Digital.
Gannett’s Louisiana newspapers did publish a different op-ed from Kennedy on March 14 regarding his opposition to children receiving gender-affirming care. That op-ed does not include any of the terms that led to the May 11th editorial’s removal.
