USA Today retroactively edited an article written by a student that affirmed biological sex to instead appease a woke mob.
The original article, authored by collegiate track star Chelsea Mitchell, detailed how authorizing biological males who claim to be females to participate on women’s high school or college sports teams ultimately hurts female athletes.
“I was the fastest girl in Connecticut. But transgender athletes made it an unfair fight,” Mitchell wrote. “That’s because males have massive physical advantages,” she went on to say later in the article, and “I’ll never know how my own college recruitment was impacted by losing those four state championship titles to a male.”
Days after the corporate media outlet published the column, however, USA Today editors caved to pressure from activists and deleted all mentions of the word “male” in the article, replacing them with “transgender” to avoid offending the captious complainers.
“This column has been updated to reflect USA TODAY’s standards and style guidelines,” the editor’s note at the top of the article states. “We regret that hurtful language was used.”
Religious freedom attorney Christiana Holcomb, who assists in representing Mitchell, called attention to the change on Twitter and noted the hypocrisy of USA Today.
“USA Today violated its principles to appease the mob. This blatant censorship violates the trust we place in media to be honest brokers of public debate,” the legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom wrote.
.@USATODAY published our client Chelsea Mitchell’s opinion about the unfairness she experienced being forced to compete against male athletes. But after backlash from the woke mob, editors unilaterally changed Chelsea’s words & called them “hurtful language.” 1/3 pic.twitter.com/tAtzrZgPzt
— Christiana Holcomb (@ChristianaADF) May 26, 2021
USA Today violated its principles to appease the mob. This blatant censorship violates the trust we place in media to be honest brokers of public debate.
Chelsea’s experience & viewpoint matters. That’s why we’re posting her original piece here https://t.co/bs6lRIxJq0. 3/3
— Christiana Holcomb (@ChristianaADF) May 26, 2021
ADF quickly republished Mitchell’s article detailing her unjust experience as a female athlete, along with an explanation of how the corporate media outlet used its power to silence the message wrapped into the athlete’s words.
“On May 22, USA Today published an opinion piece from Alliance Defending Freedom client Chelsea Mitchell (Soule v. Connecticut Association of Schools) about the injustice she experienced as an athlete who was forced to compete against males in track. On May 25, editors at USA Today, without notice to Chelsea, changed the word ‘male’ to ‘transgender’ throughout her piece,” the disclaimer at the top of the ADF article stated. “We reproduce the original version of Chelsea’s piece below so that you can read what she wrote prior to USA Today’s post-publication edits and editor’s note, which inappropriately assigned ‘hurtful’ motives to Chelsea’s logical use of the word ‘male’ to refer to the biology of males who compete in female sports.”
While USA Today did not respond to The Federalist’s request for comment, the corrupt corporate media outlet has a long track record of using its editorial power to subdue dissenting opinions or push certain agendas. In addition to often issuing partisan “fact checks” that seek to prop up slanted, unnecessary, and long-winded explanations to cover for Democrats, the corporate media outlet also employs college students to assist Big Tech in censoring media they don’t agree with or like.
In April, USA Today edited an op-ed from Stacey Abrams after it was published to mask that the failed Democrat politician initially endorsed corporate boycotts of Georgia over its new election integrity law. The piece, first published on March 31, originally called for corporations to pull their business from the state as an “impassioned response,” but after woke activists lashed out at Abrams and others for potentially hurting black-owned businesses, USA Today lent her a favor and edited out her support. An editor’s note was not added until after media organizations such as The Federalist asked about the stealthy change.
USA Today also recently colluded with an anti-gun group funded by failed Democrat presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg to attack a major gun industry trade group shortly before President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives faced questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee.
