On April 21, we responded to a hate-filled screed in The Missourian, penned by Missouri School of Journalism Professor Emeritus George Kennedy, in which he compared NRA to ISIS. In response, St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Stacy Washington wrote, “… when 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. Yet The Missourian saw fit to publish it without question, I believe, because it suits the ideological bent of the opinion editor.”
Over the weekend, Washington tweeted that the Post-Dispatch suspended her for her column: “My column on the @NRA being nothing like ISIS got me suspended from @stltoday. …”
The Missourian is now distancing itself from Kennedy’s column, calling him a “retired professor” who writes an “unpaid column,” and emphasizing that “his views are his own.” However, the fact that Kennedy remains while Washington is suspended is further proof of the sorry state of journalism at both The Missourian and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
