Metro East Sun

After writing a column meant to defend National Rifle Association members after they were compared to radical Islamic terrorists like ISIS by another writer, conservative commentator Stacy Washington lost her column with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Washington then resigned and canceled her contract with the paper.

“He gets to basically straight out lie and he gets a correction box, and I get suspended,” Washington told the Metro East Sun. “There is some bias there. Seven percent of people [in journalism] who claim to be Republican, they can’t be vocal or they would lose their jobs. Newsrooms across this country are used to treating conservatives like pariahs and horrible individuals.”

The incident was prompted by an April 28 column, “Guns and the media,” that Washington wrote in response to an anti-NRA column published by retired University of Missouri professor George Kennedy entitled, “The NRA's influence is a danger to us all,” in the Columbia Missourian.

Kennedy said law-abiding gun owners are more dangerous than ISIS.

“What makes ISIS so feared is its willingness to kill in pursuit of its goal of creating a fundamentalist caliphate,” Kennedy wrote. “What makes the NRA so feared is its willingness to spend heavily and campaign aggressively in pursuit of its goal of removing all restrictions on the possession and use of firearms just about anywhere by just about anyone.”

Washington’s column countered Kennedy’s claims.

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

Washington also wrote about the lack of conservatives in America’s newsrooms.

The column was pulled. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch said Washington wasn’t suspended for the column or its content; however, she was suspended for allegedly using her column to do promotional work for the NRA.

Washington is a regular guest on NRA TV’s “Cam & Company” and worked on a documentary produced by the organization in 2016.

The New York Post, while covering the same issue, pointed out that Washington has never been given any form of payment from the NRA for her work. It is strictly voluntary.