{"id":139700,"date":"2025-09-15T21:16:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T21:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/139700\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T21:16:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T21:16:07","slug":"washington-post-columnist-says-she-was-fired-over-posts-after-charlie-kirks-killing-washington-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/139700\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington Post columnist says she was fired over posts after Charlie Kirk\u2019s killing | Washington Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

Washington Post<\/a> columnist Karen Attiah says she has been fired from the newspaper over social media posts about gun control and race in the aftermath of far right commentator Charlie Kirk\u2019s killing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Attiah, 39, recounted in a Substack<\/a> post that she had been dropped as a Post columnist after 11 years for \u201cspeaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America\u2019s apathy toward guns\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Post, she wrote, accused \u201cmy measured Bluesky posts of being \u2018unacceptable, \u2018gross misconduct\u2019 and of endangering the physical safety of colleagues \u2013 charges without evidence, which I reject completely as false\u201d.<\/p>\n

Attiah continued: \u201cThey rushed to fire me without even a conversation. This was not only a hasty overreach, but a violation of the very standards of journalistic fairness and rigor the Post claims to uphold.\u201d<\/p>\n

The columnist\u2019s job was understood to be in jeopardy after she clashed with Post opinion editor Adam O\u2019Neal, formerly of the Economist and the Wall Street Journal, who has reportedly<\/a> offered buyouts to writers whose work does not fit with the editorial mix of the newspaper owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos.<\/p>\n

The Bezos-founded Amazon contributed<\/a> $1m to the fund for the inauguration of the second presidency of Donald Trump, for whom Kirk was a close ally. And the Post decided to forego<\/a> endorsing a candidate in the November election won by Trump, a Republican, after the newspaper\u2019s editorial board had voted to endorse Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.<\/p>\n

In her Substack post, Attiah noted that she \u201cwas the last remaining Black full-time opinion columnist\u201d on the paper and blasted that Washington DC, \u201cone of the nation\u2019s most diverse regions, \u2026 no longer has a paper that reflects the people it serves\u201d.<\/p>\n

Attiah said her firing was \u201cpart of a broader purge of Black voices from academia, business, government, and media \u2013 a historical pattern as dangerous as it is shameful \u2013 and tragic\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a> is under an editorial mandate for the newspaper\u2019s opinion section to focus specifically on supporting and defending \u201cpersonal liberties and free markets\u201d.<\/p>\n

A Washington Post spokesperson declined to comment on personnel matters and pointed to the organization\u2019s policies and standards<\/a>, including a section governing social media use.<\/p>\n

In writings on Bluesky, Attiah lamented that the US, in her opinion, \u201caccepts and worships\u201d gun violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy only direct reference to Kirk was one post \u2013 his own words on record,\u201d she said in her Substack letter. The letter included a screenshot of a Bluesky post alluding to a 2023 remark<\/a> from Kirk about how several prominent Black women \u201cdo not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to go steal a white person\u2019s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

Attiah continued that she was pointing \u201cto the familiar pattern of America shrugging off gun deaths and giving compassion for white men who commit and espouse political violence\u201d.<\/p>\n

The firing described by Attiah came after the Status media newsletter \u2013 citing sources \u2013 reported<\/a> in August that she had refused a buyout offer. It also comes days after MSNBC political analyst Matthew Dowd was dismissed<\/a> for describing Kirk \u2013 in the aftermath of his killing \u2013 as a \u201cdivisive\u201d figure who pushed \u201chate speech\u201d.<\/p>\n

Some accused Dowd of implicitly justifying the violence against Kirk by having said that \u201chateful words\u201d lead to \u201chateful actions\u201d. Dowd has since written his comments were \u201cmisconstrued\u201d and MSNBC caved to pressure from a \u201crightwing media mob\u201d.<\/p>\n

Dowd was one of the earliest instances of people across the US either being fired from or disciplined<\/a> at their jobs amid a coordinated effort to clamp down<\/a> on commentary that is critical about Kirk.<\/p>\n

In August, the Post published an opinion piece<\/a> by Trump administration official Jay Bhattacharya to argue that the federal health and human services department\u2019s decision to cut to support to mRNA vaccine development was a \u201cnecessary\u201d step. Experts have warned that the approach is wrongheaded, with mRNA vaccines having saved millions of lives during the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

The editorial page also published<\/a> an opinion from Jeanine Pirro, a former host at the conservative Fox News network who is now serving as a Washington DC district attorney, that promoted the administration\u2019s decision to deploy national guard troops on the streets of the capital to allegedly make them safer \u2013 even though the city\u2019s violent crime rate is at 30-year low.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neal reportedly sent a memo on 14 July <\/a>asserting that his \u201ctop priority will be to significantly increase the reach and effect of our work\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdvocating for free markets and personal liberties will be critical as we rebuild trust with more Americans and scale our high quality journalism,\u201d the memo reportedly said. It said the changes were \u201cnot a partisan project\u201d and the paper \u201cwon\u2019t let sentimentality slow down much-needed reform\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah says she has been fired from the newspaper over social media posts about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139701,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-139700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}