Jamie Allman, a conservative commentator for a St. Louis Sinclair-owned ABC affiliate station has reportedly resigned following his Twitter threats to sexually assault Parkland school shooting survivor David Hogg, who has increasingly become the target of conservatives and the far-right’s ire.
“We have accepted Mr. Allman’s resignation and his show has been cancelled,” Ronn Torossian, a public relations executive who is working as a spokesman for the Sinclair Broadcasting Group, told TPM in an email Tuesday. Torossian did not confirm the correlation between Allman’s tweets and his resignation.
In a tweet posted two weeks ago, Allman said that he had been “hanging out getting ready to ram a hot poker up David Hogg’s ass tomorrow.” The tweet has since been deleted, but The Riverfront Times and St. Louis Dispatch published the content of the tweet over the weekend.
Sinclair confirms that Jamie Allman, who has a nightly show on St. Louis' @KDNLABC30, has resigned after his tweet about sexually assaulting David Hogg with a hot poker sparked backlash and an advertiser boycott
Spox: "Yes his show is canceled and he is off the air immediately" pic.twitter.com/sPQfozh6ec
— Brianna Sacks (@bri_sacks) April 10, 2018
The conservative commentator resigned as advertisers reportedly started pulling their support from his TV and popular radio show, according to the St. Louis Dispatch, which compiled tweets from several local businesses who said they were cutting ties with the conservative commentator.
Allman has reportedly attacked Hogg on his former KDNL show, the “Allman Report,” as well. In a segment last week, Allman caviled about Hogg and his recent tiff with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who lost advertisers for her show after Hogg called Ingraham out for her tweet mocking him for not getting into college.
In the segment, Allman said Hogg couldn’t complain about criticism just because he’s a high school student.
“We have to be allowed to refute what you’re saying… or to respond to it, you can’t be all the time grabbing your blanket when the going gets tough,” he said, according to the Riverfront Times.
Hogg has been the subject of conservative ire following his outspoken comments about gun controlling after a former student opened fire at his high school in February, killing 17 people. Hogg and his classmates led a nationwide school walk out and a march on Washington, D.C. to oppose gun violence.
Sinclair — which currently owns 173 local TV stations in 81 broadcast markets across the U.S. — has recently come under increased scrutiny for its corporate policy that mandates local news anchors to read scripted promotional material on the air. A video compilation of dozens of anchors from Sinclair-owned stations reading the same script denouncing “fake stories” went viral in recent weeks, highlighting the conservative-leaning company’s influence across the U.S.
Sinclair’s proposed merger with Tribune Media is currently being reviewed by the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice to determine whether the $3.9 billion buy-out is in the public’s best interest. If the merger is approved, Sinclair will reach more than 70 percent of households across America.
