Conservatives purged from USA Today newsrooms by ‘Diversity committees,’ claims former editor

The corporate flags for the Gannett Co. and its flagship newspaper, USA Today, fly outside their corporate headquarters.  (REUTERS/Larry Downing)

A former USA Today deputy editor published an opinion column in the New York Post slamming his former employer for demoting him for tweeting that only women get pregnant. 

The author claimed that his plight was a consequence of USA Today’s "diversity committees" controlling newsrooms. He also warned that it will ultimately backfire after they’ve lost "half their potential readers to pursue their activist staffer’s narrow political agendas."

Former deputy editorial page editor Dave Mastio published the piece rebuking his old employer in the New York Post on Thursday. It began with a quick summary of what allegedly happened to him after he offended the woke staffers with his tweet stating that women get pregnant. 

"I know something about Gannett’s evolution since I was USA Today’s deputy editorial page editor until August, when I was demoted after I tweeted, ‘People who are pregnant are also women,’" he claimed. 

USA TODAY DELETES 23 ARTICLES BY ONE REPORTER AFTER REVIEW FINDS QUOTES ‘APPEARED TO BE FABRICATED’

According to Mastio, a fellow USA Today reporter, who was on the "diversity, equity and inclusion" beat had written a story insisting that "transgender men can get pregnant." Mastio claimed, "I compounded my sin against this new orthodoxy by calling the idea that men can get pregnant an ‘opinion.’"

USA Today bashed by former deputy editor who claims that leftists have taken over its newsrooms. (USA TODAY)

The former deputy editor alleged that his employer threatened him with a demotion if he refused to delete his tweets. "If I wanted to keep any job at USA Today, my bosses informed me, I needed to delete these offensive tweets because they were causing pain to the LGBTQ activists and journalists on our staff."

In a corresponding Twitter thread, Mastio provided further details as to his ousting. "Young woke activists on staff had been fighting for months to scrub the ‘discriminatory’ and ‘hateful’ phrase ‘pregnant women’ from USAT. Last August, they finally succeeded in replacing it with ‘pregnant people’ in a breaking news alert after the CDC used the same language," he tweeted, before detailing how he stepped out of line. 

"I subtweeted them saying ‘the people who get pregnant are also called women.’ @susmiller [Susan Miller], a USA TODAY news editor rebuked me by sending a link to USA TODAY’s ‘news’ story that detailed the lives of trans men who had babies," Mastio claimed. 

After reiterating on Twitter how he claimed that wasn’t his "opinion," Mastio tweeted, "For this, I was demoted from Deputy Editorial Page Editor and initially threatened with a $30,000 a year pay cut."

Back in his New York Post column, Mastio alleged that "that the LGBTQ Employee Resource Group and the newsroom ‘diversity’ committee thought I should be fired." Though Mastio never indicated he was fired, he only noted on Twitter that, after having to sit through "multiple meetings with the ‘diversity’ committee and the LGBTQ Employee Resource Committee," he "moved on" from the company.

"Diversity committees" have overrun USA Today, argue former employees. (Photo by: Newscast/UIG via Getty Images)

The rest of his column was devoted to warning the shareholders of Gannett (USA Today’s parent company) that they’re "being taken for a ride" by the company which is telling them that their "newspapers in dozens of states will embrace diversity, reflect their communities and bubble up a uniquely accurate view of America that millions will pay for."

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Mastio slammed this talking point and asserted its opposite, writing, "Gannett’s top editors and publishers are filling the company with a cadre of young college graduates who share a narrow ‘woke’ ideology that is alien to the values of most of its readers." He also alleged that Gannett has "a grand total of one local conservative staff columnist," "one conservative editorial page left" and "zero conservative editorial cartoonists left in the network."

He also alleged that members of the aforementioned "diversity committee" "root around in unpublished articles and try to spike those that run afoul of their agenda." He added, "the few controversial conservative columns that make it through the gauntlet must be matched with content more amenable to the diversity ideology."

In addition, Mastio revealed that "staffers in regional design centers — the people who lay out the papers — have the ability to kill conservative columns that local opinion editors select."

His overall point was that "If woke news department staffers have anything like the influence in news that they have in opinion, half our potential subscribers have no chance of seeing their views fairly represented."

Former USA deputy editorial page editor Dave Mastio finally tweets his opinion after being free of USA Today

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Mastio closed out the column stating that "Gannett and USA Today’s top leaders" have "lost control of its newsrooms, which are writing off half their potential readers to pursue activist staffers’ narrow political agendas. It won’t be long before that hits the bottom line — if it hasn’t already."

Fox News Digital reached out to Gannett for comment, though they've yet to respond.