'Indefensible' for USA Today to allow Stacey Abrams to 'stealth-edit' op-ed: Kurtz
'MediaBuzz' host Howard Kurtz calls out USA Today for allowing Stacey Abrams to revise an opinion article without an editors note. The organization has since addressed the issue, but Kurtz says 'it shouldn't have happened in the first place.'
USA Today's recent debacle over its deleted op-ed penned by Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., is the latest in a series of bizarre editorial decisions made by the newspaper giant.
Fox News Digital broke the story last week about how several USA Today Network's Louisiana-based newspapers quietly removed Kennedy's opinion piece on his opposition towards trans athletes competing in women's sports from their websites without telling the lawmaker and replacing it with an error message.
Its parent company Gannett told Fox News Digital the op-ed "did not meet our ethical guidelines, which state we will treat people with respect" and stood by its decision to pull the op-ed despite the fact that it did not express any objections to the senator's piece before publishing. Kennedy accused Gannett of trying to "silence the position it disagrees with."
After Fox News Digital reached out seeking comment, Gannett added a disclaimer to the once-broken links noting the content "has been removed because it did not meet our editorial standards."
But this isn't the first time that the editorial staff at USA Today has raised eyebrows.
USA TODAY NEWSPAPERS QUIETLY DELETE GOP SENATOR'S OP-ED ON TRANS ATHLETES WITHOUT TELLING HIM
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., accused USA Today of trying to "silence" him after the newspaper giant quietly removed his op-ed about trans athletes without telling him. (REUTERS/Larry Downing)
In March 2021, USA Today published an op-ed from Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams, who appeared to support boycotts against her state during the uproar at the time over a GOP-backed election reform law ahead of her second bid for governor.
"The impassioned response to the racist, classist bill that is now the law of Georgia is to boycott in order to achieve change," Abrams originally wrote. "Events hosted by major league baseball, world class soccer, college sports and dozens of Hollywood films hang in the balance. At the same time, activists urge Georgians to swear off of hometown products to express our outrage. Until we hear clear, unequivocal statements that show Georgia-based companies get what’s at stake, I can’t argue with an individual’s choice to opt for their competition."
She continued, "However, one lesson of boycotts is that the pain of deprivation must be shared to be sustainable. Otherwise, those least resilient bear the brunt of these actions; and in the aftermath, they struggle to access the victory. And boycotts are complicated affairs that require a long-term commitment to action. I have no doubt that voters of color, particularly Black voters, are willing to endure the hardships of boycotts. But I don’t think that’s necessary — yet... I ask you to bring your business to Georgia and, if you’re already here, stay and fight. Stay and vote."
USA Today was under fire after it allowed Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams to edit her op-ed so that she can water down her support of boycotts after the MLB pulled its 2021 All-Star game out of Atlanta. (Dustin Chambers/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
However, after the MLB pulled its All-Star game from Atlanta in protest of the law, USA Today allowed Abrams to retroactively edit her op-ed to water down her boycott support without placing an editor's note.
"The impassioned (and understandable) response to the racist, classist bill that is now the law of Georgia is to boycott in order to achieve change. Events that can bring millions of dollars to struggling families hang in the balance. Major League Baseball pulled both its All-Star Game and its draft from Georgia, which could cost our state nearly $100 million in lost revenue," Abrams' revisions read. "Rather than accept responsibility for their craven actions, Republican leaders blame me and others who have championed voting rights (and actually read the bill). Their faux outrage is designed to hide the fact that they prioritized making it harder for people of color to vote over the economic well-being of all Georgians. To add to the injury, the failed former president is now calling for cancellation of baseball as the national pastime."
"Boycotts invariably also cost jobs. To be sustainable, the pain of deprivation must be shared rather than borne by those who are least resilient... I have no doubt that voters of color, particularly Black voters, are willing to endure the hardships of boycotts. But such monetary loss is unlikely to affect the stubborn, frightened Republicans who see voter suppression as their only way to win. Money isn’t quite as seductive as political power to these putative leaders. "
Her revised op-ed adds, "Instead of a boycott, I strongly urge other events and productions to do business in Georgia and speak out against our law and similar proposals in other states."
A spokesperson for Gannett at the time told Fox News Digital, "We regret the oversight in updating the Stacey Abrams column. As soon as we recognized there was no editor’s note, we added it to the page to reflect her changes. We have reviewed our procedures to ensure this does not occur again."
Later that year, USA Today was caught stealth-editing multiple pieces after its sports columnist decried the "racist" Atlanta Braves team name.
Bob Nightengale, USA Today's MLB writer, penned a piece titled "MLB, club won't budge on Atlanta baseball team's nickname, but here's why I won't use it" that began by listing the "blatantly racist" caricatures and the "offensive" mascot that were previously removed and how headdresses, face paint and the famous "tomahawk chop" chant at games became "strongly discouraged."
"In recent years, I have tried to avoid using Atlanta’s nickname in columns," Nightengale wrote. "Copy editors have occasionally changed it in my copy because until now this has been my private stance. Several readers picked up on the name appearing in my articles during Atlanta’s World Series run, and after talking it over with my editors, I have decided to explain my stance here and make more of a concerted effort to keep the name out of my columns."
USA Today was caught stealth editing its columns to scrub "Braves" from its pieces about the Atlanta Braves after its sports writer decried the team name as racist.. (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
Nightengale's past coverage of the Braves underwent a jarring makeover. His column from the weekend originally had the headline, "Sweet revenge: Atlanta Braves knock off Los Angeles Dodgers to advance to World Series," according to The Wayback Machine. That was changed to read, "Sweet revenge: Atlanta knocks off Los Angeles Dodgers to advance to World Series."
Every reference to the "Braves" was removed from the piece.
The stealth-editing similarly occurred with another piece, originally titled, "Mighty Dodgers are reeling, frustrated after two walk-off NLCS wins for the Braves," now titled "Mighty Dodgers are reeling, frustrated after two walk-off NLCS wins for Atlanta." All uses of the word "Braves" in the piece were also scrubbed.
USA TODAY STEALTH EDITS, SCRUBS ‘BRAVES’ FROM COLUMNS AS SPORTS WRITER DECRIES ‘RACIST’ TEAM NAME
Both articles were timestamped as "updated" on Oct. 25, two days before Nightengale's piece slamming the Braves team name was published. No editor's note was initially added acknowledging the changes, though one of them included an unrelated correction.
A spokesperson referred to the stealth-edits as an "oversight," telling Fox News Digital the stories have been "corrected" with an editor's note, which reads, "A previous version of this column was edited to remove the team name after it had been originally published. Due to an editing change, the team name was inserted without the author’s knowledge."
David Mastio, a former deputy editorial page editor for USA Today, left Gannett in 2022 after roughly 25 years because of its left-wing transformation.
"USA Today had always previously been a place that welcomed vocal conservatives, that welcomed having my opinion out there. And, you know, I just didn't feel it was that kind of place anymore. And so I needed to leave," Mastio previously told Fox News Digital. "And I certainly wasn't going to get promoted again, and I wasn't going to be the next editorial page editor. So, you know, they said the next time I screwed up, I was going to be fired. So I thought it was better to leave before being fired."
FORMER USA TODAY EDITOR WARNS GANNETT: YOU'RE ON A ‘ROAD TO RUIN’ BY WRITING OFF HALF THE COUNTRY
Before leaving on his own terms, Mastio threatened to take legal action against Gannett following a nasty feud that began when he wrote on social media "People who are pregnant are also women," which he said was in response to a USA Today report that claimed transgender men can get pregnant.
By the time Mastio left USA Today, a "good number of conservatives" who worked in the newsroom were either laid off or accepted buyouts over the years and were "replaced with the young, inexpensive, woke workers."
He was compelled to speak out after it was reported that Gannett was scaling back the editorial pages of its newspapers in an effort to combat readers' perception of liberal bias, but he was particularly irked when his former boss, then-USA Today opinion editor Kristen DelGuzzi, claimed, "This is part of the overall evolution of our industry… The opinion pages feel like the last part of the newsroom to evolve."
"I just thought that was wildly untrue. And it made me want to say something," Mastio told Fox News Digital. "The conservative editorial pages had been shut down and replaced with liberal editorial pages all over the country… and I thought that the opinion sections going out across the country had evolved a lot over the last ten years and that readers had decided that they weren't good anymore. And so I thought that story needed to be told."
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Mastio offered a direct plea to Gannett to change its ways "before it's too late."
"There are tons of really good people and really good journalists across Gannett's newspapers, and I think that they're putting themselves on a road to ruin by writing off half of their readers, half of their potential customers," Mastio said. "And I would much rather have Gannett be saved because there's so much good there than this small group of loud, woke journalists, you know, driving it into a ditch."
Gannett did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
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