Pro Golfer Shared Her Christian Beliefs with Sports Reporter, Left Totally Shocked by What Happened to the Article
Most non-golfers have never heard of the Global Golf Post.
And judging by the size of the niche publication’s 17-member staff and its weekly publication scheduled, most golfers haven’t either.
But millions of readers — golfer and non-golfer alike — are hearing about the 12-year-old digital magazine now — and it’s not in a way that makes it look good at all.
In August, Fox News’ Laura Ingram gave national exposure to a story that has been bubbling in conservative media since the U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach, when golfer Amy Olson competed on the course while she was seven months pregnant with her first child.
And a Global Golf Post interview with her was not published because of her pro-life, avowedly Christian beliefs.
Check out the interview here.
Pro golfer: I was censored because I’m a Christian and conservative. pic.twitter.com/GjnxTK78BB
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) August 19, 2023
At the time of the early July tournament, Olson got plenty of attention — Golf Digest did a feature on her. CNN did a light profile — headlined on the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches she asked for.
The ballyhoo was short-lived, since Olson failed to make the cut to go into weekend play. But while it lasted, according to Fox News, TheBlaze and other outlets, Global Golf Post readers never got to hear Olson’s views on being a Christian in the sports world, or her response to the reaction she received playing while pregnant in a United States where the legal monstrosity of Roe v. Wade had been overturned.
That’s because the publication killed the story.
The reporter, now-former Global Golf Post senior writer Steve Eubanks, told TheBlaze that he quit after 12 years with the publication because it would only run the piece “if we take out the abortion and the Christian stuff.”
“About five hours into the editing process, I got calls from the editor saying, in his exact words, ‘The staff is going nuts. They’re saying we can’t run this,'” Eubanks told TheBlaze.”I was fighting very vociferously to get it run, saying, ‘It’s news; we’re a news outlet.’ And the point I wanted to make — if she had said exactly the opposite, I still would have fought to put it in.”
And what was it Olson had said that Global Golf Post didn’t see fit to publish?
She had the gall to notice that the treatment she received for playing in a golf championship while expecting a child was considerably different from the way most of the mainstream media treated another issue directly related to women with children developing in their wombs.
“I’ve been honored that people have picked up the story and been interested. I feel like everyone has been supportive. Nothing but goodwill has come toward me, and I’ve so appreciated that,” Olson told Eubanks, according to TheBlaze.
“I will say that the irony is not lost on me that, one year ago, when Roe v. Wade was overturned, I was playing in a major championship outside Washington, D.C., and women from around the world, and even on tour, were outraged. Now, a year later, people are celebrating that I’m going to be playing a major championship with an unborn child that they recognize as a life.
“Even on Golf Channel, one of the hosts said that instead of 156, this year there will be 157 players in the field, recognizing that our child is a human being who will be out there with me.
“That irony is not lost on me. I celebrate that our general humanity and common sense knows why this is something special.”
And then there was Olson’s take on living her life as a Christian in a sports world.
“It’s very tough. Being a Christian has always been political because Christianity is supposed to touch every aspect of your life. I believe in comprehensive Christianity. It dictates how you treat people, how you think about the world, and the decisions that you make,” she said, according to TheBlaze.
“But over the last decade, it’s become extremely difficult because a lot of the things that Christianity stands for have become political battlegrounds. Christ hasn’t changed His view on any of those things, but the culture has changed. So it’s a lot less acceptable to be an open Christian and to believe what Christianity has stood for the last 2,000 years.”
You don’t have to be either pro-life or a Christian to recognize the simple truth of those observations — but they were apparently too radical for the Global Golf Post.
They were also, reportedly, too radical for the editors of USA Today.
According to TheBlaze, a writer at USA Today’s Golfweek picked up the story of “the interview that never ran,” but it never ran in Golfweek because editors killed it.
According to Fox, Golfweek and USA Today did not respond to a request for comment. According to TheBlaze, Global Golf Post publisher Jim Nugent did not respond to a request for comment.
But as shocking as the blatant viewpoint bias still is — even after all this time — no one familiar with the majority of the media environment in 2023 could be surprised.
The progressive politicization of every aspect of life has long since infected sports — Colin Kaepernick, the U.S. Women’s National Team in soccer, Black Lives Matter saturation in the NBA, Major League Baseball taking a position on a voting law change in Georgia.
And it infected the establishment media long before that — with USA Today easily ranking as one of the worst offenders.
Considering that that’s a direct violation of the duty of journalism, that’s far worse than the antics of empty-headed athletes on a soccer pitch or a football gridiron, or even the panicked actions of the MLB suits in the executive suites.
“The news media is supposed to report news,” Olson told Ingraham. “And anything that is going to garner the public’s attention, that’s generally what they try to put out.
“But apparently that’s only the case if you have a certain opinion. And so, the fact that my opinion was censored, whether it’s because I’m a Christian or conservative, that was really unfortunate.”
It’s the unfortunate reality conservative Americans know all too well.
But even after all this time, it’s still shocking when it happens.
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