post_status => publish not working

The post gets added and published but since you have the meta query and the meta key is not added when you submit the post from frontend, it does not show up. Use the following code which adds the meta data as needed.

if ( isset( $_POST['submitted'] ) ) {
     $post_information = array(
                              'post_title' => wp_strip_all_tags( $_POST['postTitle'] ),
                              'post_content' => $_POST['postContent'],
                              'post_type' => 'post',
                              'post_status' => 'publish'
                         );

     $new_post = wp_insert_post( $post_information );

     // Add the post meta
     add_post_meta( $new_post, '_wti_like_count', 0, true );
     add_post_meta( $new_post, '_wti_unlike_count', 0, true );
     add_post_meta( $new_post, '_wti_total_count', 0, true );
}