The Washington Post dropped famed radio host Garrison Keillor's weekly column on Thursday after he failed to inform the newspaper of sexual harassment allegations against him.
The "Prairie Home Companion" creator was fired from his home station Minnesota Public Radio on Wednesday after allegations of "inappropriate behavior" towards a coworker. MPR wrote in a statement it had first heard of the allegations a month earlier.
But despite Keillor knowing about the investigation, he failed to inform the Post, which continued to publish his weekly column. Embarrassingly, Keillor's column the day before his Wednesday firing defended Minnesota Senator Al Franken from similar sexual harassment allegations, calling it "pure absurdity" to demand the senator resign.
After the news broke, editors updated the piece to note the allegations against Keillor. "The Post takes allegations of this kind seriously and is seeking more information about them," it read.
The next day, Keillor was dropped entirely. "Readers are entitled to a basic level of transparency from the columnists they read in the Washington Post," editorial page editor Fred Hiatt said in a statement. "Garrison Keillor failed to meet that standard this week."
Hiatt said Keillor should have avoided the issue entirely in his column, "or if he was going to write, he should have told his editors and readers that he was under investigation."