CHARLESTON — When The Charleston Gazette-Mail took down Joshua Higginbotham’s (R) candidate questionnaire after voters in his district viewed his answers unfavorably, it showed the level of corruption that exists in the media. A “Pultizer Prize-winning newspaper” purportedly colluding with a candidate to take down his published responses after receiving blowback.
Higginbotham told The Gazette-Mail that if elected to the West Virginia State Senate, he will be the lead sponsor of a bill that will allow men to use girls’ changing rooms, restrooms, locker rooms, and showers. As a delegate, Higginbotham served as the lead sponsor of HB2998 (2021), better known as ‘The Fairness Act.’ In §5-11-2 on line 2, the bill provided “equal access to places of public accommodations” on the basis of “gender identity.” Therefore, a biological male can identify as a female and gain access to all public facilities. This includes restrooms and any other facilities open to the general public in businesses, parks, organizations, recreational centers, etc.
After being published for 17 days, The Gazette-Mail deleted the entire article that included his responses.
This also goes to show the candidate’s disconnect with voters in District 8. When an answer to a candidate questionnaire is enough to cause a firestorm of angry reactions from the Republican voters in the district and you then try to erase what was said, it appears that Higginbotham is now trying to hide his true legislative motives from his voters. This is unethical, deceptive, and dangerous to our democratic republic. Even worse, The Gazette-Mail appeared to enable and participate in this unethical deception. They tried to change past events to potentially make a political candidate look better than he would if the truth was told. It’s revisionist journalism at its worst.
The Charleston Gazette-Mail was caught suppressing the truth, destroying the credibility and reliability of their newspaper solely to seemingly help Higginbotham win his primary election.
UPDATE 4/8/2022 3:49 PM: After outrage ensued following their decision to pull down Higginbotham’s candidate questionnaire, it has been re-published on The Charleston Gazette-Mail’s website. On March 28, after the questionnaire was pulled, The Gazette-Mail published a statement on social media reading, “The Gazette-Mail is posting all candidates’ responses to our questionnaire on April 7, a week after the March 31 deadline to respond.” An official statement from The Gazette-Mail explaining why the candidate questionnaire was pulled from their site has not been made at this time.
It is also important to note that the state senatorial election is the second-highest position being sought on the ballot in their area.