The St. Louis Post-Dispatch suspended a conservative editorialist over a column that pointed out media bias on gun control. In the column, Stacy Washington took issue with a University of Missouri journalism professor who argued the National Rifle Association is America’s version of ISIS, an Islamic terrorist organization.
Washington, known as Stacy on the Right, wrote:
“NRA members committed none of the gun crimes that he mentioned in his article. When inner-city residents complain of crime in their neighborhoods or decry the lack of adequate policing, the NRA or its membership are never mentioned. The NRA does not advocate for felons to own guns, nor is it NRA policy to seek to lower the legal age to own a firearm. To describe their activities in this manner is to slander the organization. Would the Missourian open its op-ed section for an NRA response?”
Two days later, Washington tweeted,”My column on the @NRA being nothing like ISIS got me suspended from @stltoday.”
One letter to the-editor, published a day later, accused Washington of being a paid-shill for the NRA, an assertion she denied. She has served as a guest host for NRA news without pay.
.@stltoday published a letter to the editor calling me a paid @NRA shill. I informed Tod Robberson on Saturday that I am not paid by the NRA
— Stacy Washington (@StacyOnTheRight) May 1, 2017
Her column appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on April 28. In her column, Washington wrote that the “failure of media to represent the opposing, especially conservative, view is an increasingly apparent deficit in the news reporting apparatus in our country.”
As if to prove Washington’s point, Post-Dispatch editors suspended her. She terminated the contract the same day.