A longtime columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal announced his resignation Tuesday after being banned from writing about the paper’s new owner, casino magnate and GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson, Politico New York reported.
“In Las Vegas, a quintessential company town, it’s the blowhard billionaires and their political toadies who are worth punching. And if you don’t have the freedom to call the community’s heavyweights to account, then that ‘commentary’ tag isn’t worth the paper on which it’s printed,” John L. Smith wrote in a letter to his co-workers posted around the newsroom, according to Politico.
At a Society of Professional Journalists meeting over the weekend, the newly-minted editor of the Review-Journal, Keith Moyer, publicly divulged that he wouldn’t allow Smith to write about Adelson.
“As long as I’m editor, John won’t write about Sheldon Adelson,” Moyer reportedly said at the time.
Smith previously wrote about how Adelson had sued him “into bankruptcy” over a book he published in 2005, before ultimately agreeing to dismiss the lawsuit. Moyer told Politico that he thought the lawsuit made it a conflict of interest for Smith to write about Adelson.
“I will tell you that John Smith and Sheldon Adelson have some personal — they have a long history, a legal history,” Moyer told the publication. “Frankly, I personally think it was a conflict for John to write about Sheldon. The fact that he was [writing about Adelson] was a problem. It wasn’t right.”
An anonymous person with knowledge of the situation told Politico that Smith was first instructed not to write about Adelson months ago, on Jan. 28. Smith did not return Politico’s request for comment.
Moyer joined the Review-Journal in February. His predecessor, Mike Hengel, resigned just days after the Review-Journal assured readers in a front-page editorial that it would maintain its independence from Adelson and keep its reporting fair and balanced.
