Columnist Fights Back After Being Suspended for Pro-Gun Views

Authors Current Events S.H. Blannelberry
Columnist Fights Back After Being Suspended for Pro-Gun Views

Stacy Washington is a pro-NRA conservative.  (Photo: NRATV)

The NRA is an evil organization. If you want to work as a journalist for mainstream media, that is the line you have to toe. To suggest otherwise is to put your career and livelihood at risk.

You think I’m joking? Maybe being hyperbolic? Don’t think so.

Let’s do a quick flashback to some examples of how the NRA and gun owners have been portrayed by the media.

“The people who fight and lobby and legislate to make guns regularly available are complicit in the murder of those [Sandy Hook] children,” wrote Adam Gopnik, a Staff Writer for the New Yorker in 2012.

“You’re a scared white person, almost certainly male. You do not live in a major city, or near a university or intellectual hub of any note, nor have you ever traveled very far from your home town (sic), much less out of state or anywhere further than, say, Mexico. Once. And that was enough,” wrote Mark Morford, a columnist for SFGate, in his attempt to define gun owners in 2014.

Remember Katie Couric’s 2016 gun documentary? The one where she added an 8-second pause for “dramatic effect” that made the gun owners in the film appear to be speechless during a line of questioning in which they actually had no problem answering?

Speaking of creative edits, remember when NBC News edited the Zimmerman 911 call in 2012 to make him appear racist? Hmmm, I wonder what sort of agenda NBC News was pushing? Gun owners = Racists.

Apologies for the long intro, but this subject obviously gets me fired up. To the news at hand! Stacy Washington, a conservative columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was recently suspended because she penned a piece, titled, “Guns and the Media,” defending the NRA against comparisons to ISIS.

“[W]hen has a member of the NRA ever decapitated, set on fire, tossed from a rooftop or otherwise terrorized another American? The linkage is not only rife with improper context; it is false on its face,” wrote Washington.

She later commented on the lack of conservative voices in the media, “This failure to represent the opposing, especially conservative, view is an increasingly apparent deficit in the news reporting apparatus in our country.”

Heresy! Heresy! Heresy!

That was basically the reaction from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which promptly found a way to suspend Washington. The board claimed that Washington failed to disclose her “promotional appearances” on the NRA TV’s “Cam & Company” and her contribution to an NRA documentary in August of 2016 even though she never took a dime for either.

“Her active promotional activities and professional association with the National Rifle Association represented an unacceptable conflict of interest in her most recent column, which resulted in our suspension of her work,” wrote Tod Robberson, the Post-Dispatch’s editorial page editor, in a response.

“Columnists are expected to fully disclose conflicts of interest when writing about topics where such a conflict might arise,” Robberson continued. “We apply this standard regardless of the lobbying or advocacy group being written about in a column.”

The Post-Dispatch’s response is total B.S. It claimed that it didn’t suspend Washington because of her pro-NRA views in the column.  Yeah, right.  That pig won’t fly.

What I imagined happened over there is that a low-level editor approved Washington’s column for publication. But once it hit the newsstands, the powers that be saw it and freaked the heck out. Is there any greater sin? I mean, to defend the NRA in print is tantamount to complimenting the Trump administration or questioning the scientific consensus on climate change. All are equally damnable in the eyes of the media elite.

Shortly after the fiasco, Washington quit her job at the Post-Dispatch. She took to Twitter to defend her positions and beliefs.

“I’m not ashamed that I’m an NRA supporter, a Bible-thumper, that I love Jesus Christ. I’m all the way out there,” she said. “There’s nothing else that I can do to articulate my perspective any more clearly on where I stand.”

While I don’t blame her for quitting, I sorta wish she would’ve stayed at the Post-Dispatch.  It would have afforded her more opportunities to fight the power from within.  Sure, she’ll be happier elsewhere, say at a conservative publication that embraces her values, but she’ll also be preaching to the choir instead of unnerving, unsettling, unhousing the media elite.

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  • Reb May 18, 2017, 9:40 am

    Just a comment to say that the Dems and “news media” are SLIMY. They try to prevent and give a bad name and appearance to everything that President Trump tries to do to improve America. They want to control America.

    • Smitty April 1, 2020, 2:14 pm

      They do control almost half of it.

  • Roger Reynolds May 12, 2017, 5:56 pm

    Can’t help but wonder, how many of the fake media reporters are card carrying members of anti-gun groups? Hmn?

    • Smitty April 1, 2020, 2:15 pm

      Piece of cake. The answer is….uh all of em?

  • Rocky May 12, 2017, 12:18 pm

    I think y’all meant to use a different word than “hearsay”
    I’m thinkin’ the word intended was “heresy”
    her·e·sy
    ˈherəsē/Submit
    noun
    belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious (especially Christian) doctrine.
    “Huss was burned for heresy”
    synonyms: dissension, dissent, nonconformity, heterodoxy, unorthodoxy, apostasy, blasphemy, freethinking; More
    opinion profoundly at odds with what is generally accepted.
    “cutting capital gains taxes is heresy
    Because “hearsay” is a totally different thing.

    • S.H. Blannelberry May 12, 2017, 12:57 pm

      Yeah, you’re right! Thanks for catching that.

  • Larry May 12, 2017, 12:03 pm

    The St Louis Post Dispatch is nothing more than yet another crappy little NY Times wannabee. So full of their own BS that their smugness is only overshadowed by their sanctimonious leftist clap trap!

  • Alan May 12, 2017, 11:53 am

    Well ok then, does this mean that the MSM tracks every organization all of their Journalists support, are a member of, and are registered as???????
    In short, if a Journalist is a registered Democrat voter (Most are) does THAT mean they are disallowed from writing articles on
    Democratic policies or Bills??????
    We all know damn well and good that that simply isn’t the case, and we know many MSM outlets have openly endorsed the last Democratic candidate.
    So, by their own standards, we now know that we cannot trust the MSM, BY THEIR OWN ADMISSION!!!!
    Of course, that’s NOT news to any of us, but hey! when you can get them to actually step in their own B.S., it’s good reason for us to cheer and gloat!

    • Smitty April 1, 2020, 2:18 pm

      So that’s why their shoes have that sticky smelly stuff on em?

  • Angry Tom May 12, 2017, 11:10 am

    Stacy is a gem of a person. She deserves a national podium from which to tell the truth.The St Louis Post-Dispatch has gone from being one of the most important and respected daily newspapers in the USA to being an out-of-state owned irrelevant
    garbage wrapper. The Tuesday edition is an 8-page brochure that routinely is blown off my driveway into a ditch by the wind.
    I would have stopped our subscription years ago but my wife likes to do the Cryptoquip with her coffee in the morning. Getting hired in the first place was a miracle for Stacy and P-D readers and getting canned by the paper after only a few columns via lies and dirty tricks was inevitable. The P-D was founded by a Hungarian immigrant who came to St Louis before the Civil War a penniless young man. His name was Joseph Pulitzer (yes, THAT Pulitzer). For more than a hundred years each paper carried a statement of principles by Pulitzer that promised objective reporting, truth and independence from party politics. They don’t print that anymore. UP Ms Washington and DOWN Post-Disgrace.

    • Angry Tom May 12, 2017, 11:25 am

      I WAS WRONG. My wife got out the magnifying glass and read me the P-D Platform they still print at the bottom of the Opnion page. I think you will agree it is deliciously ironic in 2017:
      I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate justice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty. Joseph Pulitzer, April 10, 1907.
      And now he whirls in his grave, weeping.

    • Smitty April 1, 2020, 2:31 pm

      There isn’t a local paper in the country that’s not owned by some Corp. conglomerate. Why do you think Pelosi and the Dems were trying to pass a retirement plan for local newspaper employees as part of the COVID-19 relief plan? I wouldn’t wrap Luca Brasi’s bulletproof vest in it. (sleeps with the fishes)

  • gary May 12, 2017, 10:34 am

    the 8 seconds was a total miss representation of what happened not a drama effect. It was design to make the people look stupid and speechless to her almighty presence.

  • joefoam May 12, 2017, 8:56 am

    You have to question every bit of information disseminated from media sources. None of it can be assumed to be true.

  • LVE4GOD May 12, 2017, 8:48 am

    Someday I hope to marry a woman like this. Causing liberal heads to explode when they see an interracial couple who love Jesus Christ and support the NRA would just be icing on the cake. 😊

  • srsquidizen May 12, 2017, 8:10 am

    The NRA racist? They’re the ONLY major organization that openly encourages racial, religious and other minorities targeted by hate crimes to defend themselves because the police won’t be there to do it for them. That’s the perfect opposite of racism IMO: “You have the same right to live as anybody and the NRA’s job is to help you defend it.”

    Safe bet the lady would still have her job if she had done unpaid work on her own time for say the ACLU instead of the NRA.

    • deanbob May 12, 2017, 10:07 am

      Many psychologists have a term for those making such accusations – projectors (projecting their own conscious or subconscious beliefs).

      • tommy jones May 12, 2017, 8:13 pm

        Exactly what accusations do you mean and by whom?

  • Dr Motown May 12, 2017, 7:38 am

    Exactly why I haven’t subscribed to my local newspaper for years now. The editorial page is 5 liberals and 1 tepid conservative. When I complained about that, I got a form letter explaining how “balanced” their approach was!

  • Will Drider May 8, 2017, 6:42 pm

    Good job Stacy Washington. Standing up for what you believe in (and you are in the good company of millions of others) in the face of bias oppression of the media leftists, is truely impressive.
    Thank you for your work, determination and unswerving stance supporting the truth.

    • SuperG May 9, 2017, 10:39 am

      You said it better than I could!

      • LEADFOOT May 12, 2017, 1:26 pm

        I TOTALLY AGREE !

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