Longtime Washington Post writer Karen Attiah says she has been fired from the publication’s Opinions department for “speaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns.”
The Post, which has been overhauling the entire department, declined to comment on personnel matters. But Attiah’s Post biography has been revised to say she “was” a columnist, indicating she is no longer employed.
“The Washington Post wrongly fired Opinions columnist Karen Attiah over her social media posts,” the paper’s staff guild wrote in a statement Monday afternoon. “The Post not only flagrantly disregarded standard disciplinary processes, it also undermined its own mandate to be a champion of free speech.”
Attiah posted a string of messages about political violence in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination last week. She criticized what she called “empty rhetoric” denouncing violence that hasn’t been matched by actions.
One of her posts asserted that “part of what keeps America so violent is the insistence that people perform care, empty goodness and absolution for white men who espouse hatred and violence.”
Attiah didn’t reference Kirk by name, but she also said to a commenter that “refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence is… not the same as violence.”
Attiah wrote in a Monday blog post that “my commentary received thoughtful engagement across platforms, support, and virtually no public backlash.”
But her assertion that Kirk “espoused violence” may have been flagged by Post management.
Two Post staffers told CNN that management also took issue with Attiah misquoting a Kirk remark on affirmative action from 2023.
Attiah wrote that “the Post accused my measured Bluesky posts of being ‘unacceptable’, ‘gross misconduct’ and of endangering the physical safety of colleagues — charges without evidence, which I reject completely as false.”
The Post declined to say who made those accusations. The Opinion department has been in turmoil for months, driven by Post owner Jeff Bezos and his desire to change the direction of the editorial board.
Bezos said in February that “we are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.” Over the summer the Post hired a new Opinion editor, Adam O’Neal, who said he would reorient the department accordingly.
Many of the Post’s opinion columnists have departed as a result of Bezos’s moves.
“I was the last remaining Black full-time opinion columnist at the Post, in one of the nation’s most diverse regions,” Attiah wrote in her blog post.
Attiah’s exit comes amid a growing effort from conservative activists to get people who’ve bashed Kirk following his murder — with comments ranging from outright celebration at his death to indifference or criticism of his legacy — fired from their jobs.
The free expression group PEN America said Monday that “the firing and suspension of multiple journalists after the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk should alarm anyone who cares about free speech and a free press. Taken together, these measures risk creating a chilling effect that extends beyond those directly targeted, weakening public discourse at a moment when open debate is urgently needed.”
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