Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inboxGet our free Inside Washington emailGet our free Inside Washington emailLongtime Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah said on Monday that she had been fired by the newspaper last week over “unacceptable” social media posts she made in the wake of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination, adding that she was the last remaining full-time Black opinion writer on staff.The Washington Post did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Attiah’s termination from the Post comes days after MSNBC fired political analyst Matthew Dowd for describing Kirk – the founder of conservative youth organization Turning Point USA and a prominent MAGA pundit – as a “divisive” figure who pushed “hate speech” shortly after he was shot.Additionally, there has been an effort led by prominent right-wing influencers and political leaders to target people who have criticized Kirk and seemingly celebrated his death, resulting in numerous employees being fired or suspended after their companies and organizations have been made aware of any anti-Kirk posts.“As a columnist, I used my voice to defend freedom and democracy, challenge power and reflect on culture and politics with honesty and conviction,” Attiah wrote on Substack. “Now, I am the one being silenced – for doing my job.”open image in galleryKaren Attiah said she was fired as a Washington Post columnist over social media posts she made in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. (Getty Images)Attiah, the paper’s founding Global Opinions editor who rose to prominence following the horrific murder of her columnist Jamal Khashoggi, noted that in the wake of Kirk’s death she had taken to social media to express “sadness and fear for America” while condemning the country’s acceptance of political violence.“My most widely shared thread was not even about activist Charlie Kirk, who was horribly murdered, but about the political assassinations of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman, her husband and her dog,” she stated. “I pointed to the familiar pattern of America shrugging off gun deaths, and giving compassion for white men who commit and espouse political violence. This cycle has been documented for years. Nothing I said was new or false or disparaging— it is descriptive, and supported by data.”Adding that she did her “journalistic duty” to remind people that, at the time, no suspect or motive had been identified in Kirk’s killing, she noted that she had only made one direct reference to the slain conservative influencer in her social media posts. In that instance, she quoted Kirk saying that prominent Black women such as Michelle Obama and Shelia Jackson Lee did not have “the brain processing power to be taken seriously” and needed to “steal a white person’s slot.”“My commentary received thoughtful engagement across platforms, support, and virtually no public backlash,” Attiah wrote. “And yet, 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,” she continued. “They 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.”Pointing out that 22-year-old Tyler Robinson has since been accused of carrying out that assassination of Kirk, Attiah said that her “words on absolution for white male violence have proven prescient” as the suspect is “indeed a young white man, and already, lawmakers are urging us to pray for him.” She asserted that the media is now painting Robinson as a “good, all-American suburban kid,” and that the “cycle I mentioned has once again come to pass.”The termination of Attiah also comes a month after she reportedly had a tense standoff with the Post’s newly installed opinion editor Adam O’Neal amid an exodus of staffers following the paper’s conservative shift in the opinion section. Though a number of veteran columnists and journalists had taken the voluntary buyouts the Post was offering to those who felt they didn’t align with the new vision, Attiah instead decided to stay despite her poor meeting with O’Neal. open image in galleryKaren Attiah said on Monday that what happened to her “is part of a broader purge of Black voices from academia, business, government, and media.” (AFP via Getty Images)At the time of her meeting with O’Neal, who was hired earlier this year to carry out owner Jeff Bezos’ mandate that the opinion section focus on defending the free market and “personal liberties,” Attiah stated that she was “officially” the “last Black staff columnist left in the Washington Post’s opinion section.” While the paper still features some Black contributing columnists, such as Keith Richburg and Theodore Johnson, other veteran Black journalists have recently opted for the paper’s exit package rather than adhere to the new direction.“Washington D.C. no longer has a paper that reflects the people it serves,” she wrote in her Substack on Monday. “What happened to me is part of a broader purge of Black voices from academia, business, government, and media — a historical pattern as dangerous as it is shameful — and tragic.”In a separate social media thread, Attiah expressed pride in starting the Post’s Global Opinions section, stating that as its founding editor, she “helped build a journalistic home for diverse writers from around the world, many of them censored for their views in their countries.” This brought her to Khashoggi, the dissident Saudi journalist who was assassinated in 2018 by Saudi government agents at the behest of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.“I hired Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2017, and worked with him closely until he was murdered by the Saudi regime in Istanbul — simply for expressing himself,” she posted on Bluesky. “I put my safety on the line for years to push publicly for justice and accountability in his murder.”She went on to insist that she is now “being silenced by the Washington Post” for “lamenting America’s acceptance of apathy towards political violence and gun deaths — especially when the violence is encouraged and carried out by white men.”During her time at the Washington Post, which began in 2014, Attiah won the 2019 George Polk Award and was the 2019 Journalist of the Year from the National Association of Black Journalists.
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Washington Post columnist says she was fired over her ‘unacceptable’ Charlie Kirk social media posts
