Washington Post Ordered to Rehire Columnist Fired Over Charlie Kirk Comments
Arbitrator Sarah Miller Espinosa determined that WaPo “did not have good and sufficient cause” to fire Karen Attiah.
A private arbitrator ordered The Washington Post to rehire columnist Karen Attiah and give her back pay.
Last year, Attiah accused WaPo “of violating its labor agreement and social media policy after it fired her” over her posts on Charlie Kirk’s assassination:
The Washington Post said in its termination letter that Ms. Attiah’s posts about Mr. Kirk had harmed “the integrity” of the organization and violated standards requiring employees to use social media with civility and respect.
Ms. Attiah’s remarks about Mr. Kirk’s assassination, which she posted to the social network Bluesky on Sept. 10, the day he was shot, responded to the outpouring of grief after the shooting. “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,” Ms. Attiah wrote in one of the posts.
Except, you know, Kirk did not espouse violence, and Attiah posted a fake quote:
She posted an alleged quote from Kirk, stating that he said, “Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot.”
This was not accurate. In fact, Kirk was responding to a 2023 Supreme Court ruling that affirmative action in university admissions was racist against Asian and white students. During his July 13, 2023, broadcast, Kirk said, “If we would have said three weeks ago … that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racist. But now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us! They’re coming out and saying ‘I’m only here because of affirmative action.'”
Joy Reid and the other women were vocal about how affirmative action was to credit for their academic inclusion in top universities. “Yeah, we know,” said Kirk on his show. “You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.” He was speaking about these women, not all women, and referencing their own commentary on their own success.
Attiah posted a letter from human resources, telling her the posts “harm the integrity of our organization, and potentially endanger the physical safety of our staff.”
Arbitrator Sarah Miller Espinosa determined that WaPo “did not have good and sufficient cause” to fire Attiah, did not prove the posts met the “gross misconduct” standard, and “violated the news organization’s collective bargaining agreement.”
“This decision confirms what we’ve said from the start: I was doing my job as an opinion journalist, and doing that job is not misconduct,” Attiah said. “After spending over a decade of my career at the Post as an editor and an opinion columnist focusing on race, gender and global human rights, I’m relieved to finally have that record set straight.”
[Featured image via YouTube]
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Comments
I never got people who wanted to force the people who fired them to take them back.
I suppose if you know you can’t find another job you might want to be where you’re not wanted for the sake of the paycheck.
If wrongly terminated, I’d rather just take a lump sum and move on.
An order to be rehired is a handy place from which to negotiate that lump sum.
“Opinion journalist” – heavy on “opinion,” very light on “journalist.”
They currently have synonymous meanings.
Arbitrator Sarah Miller Espinosa
Another woman.
You know I’ve said the downfall of society began in the 70s with the pill and late second or early third wave feminism. However a trilogy I’m reading about the navel battles of WW2 points out that women leaving their lane really began at the conclusion of WW2. This is when many women after working traditional male jobs and supporting their families during the war would not go back into the household at least quietly. That led to a bump in the divorce rate up to 4-5% which of course is no where near todays 50% plus rate. I thought this was interesting. Opportunity leading to disenchantment with traditional roles.
Men, and really a lot of women don’t know how awful it was for women before WW2 and even after
I was never given any support or encouragement from teachers despite being a pretty good student. Not great , it was the 60’s
My parents weren’t any better. They were fighting their own demons.
My HS counselor told me to get married and have 2 martinis a day like his wife
I told him if he were my husband , I’d be drinking every day!
I couldn’t open a checking account without my father co signing, I couldn’t even play the saxophone in 3 rd grade, despite being first chairs of all 3 rd grade with those plastic recorders. I was told I would have to play the clarinet, by my male music instructor, with my mother sitting there, because I was a girl
I can’t tell how many things were fed into my head because “I was a girl”
My mother suffered too, a beautiful bright woman, was not allowed to finish HS because she got married at 16.
My father was 21, straight from fighting the Nazis with Patton
It was common then
Hell husbands could get rid of a wife by claiming them mentally unstable and put on psych hospitals, electric shock, lobotomy, no problem.
Many goood things have changed for women, Title 9
Who ever thought the very women it benefits can’t even define a “woman”
We were always our worse enemy
And I now dont trust most women in business nor politics
Full circle
“Hell husbands could get rid of a wife by claiming them mentally unstable and put on psych hospitals, electric shock, lobotomy, no problem.”
Now they are literally lining both sides of the street, and nobody can do anything about them.
The pendulum swings one way then it swings another always overcorrecting, Things got better and then the feminists overreached dragging many women with them and demonizing those would not do what they were told. That last part sounds familiar doesn’t it,
It began with the 19th Amendment.
Attiah does not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously.
There I said.
This is silly. WaPo should have the right to hire and fire for any reason. That they hamstrung themselves in any labor agreement demonstrates they don’t have the brain processing power to be taken seriously.
Okay, They have to hire her back. They don’t have to publish anything she writes. Make her come into work every day but never publish any of her writings.
Clearly she’s out of the same box as Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown.
Or assign her a task of being a columnist on muscle and fitness for women. I understand she knows quite a bit about this subject.
A scene from The Fountainhead comes to mind, but unfortunately the Washington Post doesn’t have a Gail Wynand to pull the plug.
Just so I have this correctly: you can make untrue statements about Charlie Kirk, but CANNOT make true statements about Jason Arday. Did I get that right?
No, you didn’t. This is not the UK. In the USA you can certainly make true statements about that charlatan, and now that he’s dead and can’t sue you can even make deliberately false ones.
‘private arbitrator.’
Nope. Not happening. Cultural sadism should not be tolerated from this person.
Particulary when ICE agents can be denied service at restuarants, pro-life groups removed from public rallies, 2A clubs de-banked, and women who wear pro-women apparel at a women’s basketball game are expelled from the stands.
Those are all private businesses and can operate how ever they chose. The WaPo is a private business and is under no obligation to facillitate this woman’s cultural sadism toward a murdered man.
Nope. Not happening.
They need to put her a position that she will immediately be unsuccessful
And fire her again
What they need to do is do what Japanese companies do-send her to the oidashibeya, the banishment room. Give her nothing to do-or give her menial tasks until she resigns.
Trust me, it works. In one of my previous jobs, I worked my last two weeks doing absolutely nothing except looking around on the internet. I was given nothing to do. It’s really soul crushing.
With what they probably pay her, she would just sit in the room and collect the checks.
Put her in the basement, take away her red stapler, and turn off the lights.
That mostly happened to me once when the company was doing rennovations. I am convinced that they for a time forgot I was employed.
Nah, you are missing the forest of today’s headlines for the trees of natural rights.
Commie teacher union chief attacks wokies at Target for not hating ICE enough.
Democrat-superpowered NYC unions attack Commie Mayor over who gets to control the grocery racket.
Woke, commie megapaper forced to rehire troublesome DEI RBF.
They have begun to eat each other over who gets to do what, and with which, and to whom. Pour a drink and enjoy the cockfight.
WaPo has a collective bargaining agreement. If they have to rehire her, they should give her a job she is qualified to do where she won’t be commenting on politics. Muscle/fitness/beauty for women might be her best qualification.
It’s funny but I always thought a company could fire an employee for any reason. When did they change the law?
The story indicates that she had an employment agreement and that a union was involved.
Either that or you can have HR policies that require certain things to terminate someone and the Post did not follow that policy.
There are “right to work” states where people can be terminated at will, but if you have policies for the workplace, the company has to follow those policies, even in right to work states.
The union got to arbitrate a free speech issue?
These people mocking Charlie and gloating that he’s dead need to start catching bullets of their own. See how it feels.
It’s not like it’s a target-starved environment.
This was not accurate? No. She lied. To be specific, she made up a defamatory quote attributed to a man who had just been murdered and spread it around on her social media account. This is the exact *opposite* of what a media organization like the WaPo *should* be doing. It is the grossest of misconduct, and any kind of reputable arbitrator should be able to recognize this most elementary fact.
Fire the arbitrator too, and don’t let this horrid example of journalism inside the building ever again. If she threatens to sue, respond with the truth (as above).
Here is the case: https://www.democracydefendersfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/082026_Arbitration-Decision-WBNG-and-The-Washington-Post-Re-Karen-Attiah_Redacted.pdf
A private arbitrator?
Yes.
Who paid this arbitrator?
The WaPo.
Why?
So they can fire someone who makes them look bad and make themselves to seem righteous so as not to create a public relations nightmare, yet really want that same someone to keep working for them.
So… she was fired but not really fired because she was un-fired by the arbitrator they paid to do the un-firing so that the firing wasn’t a firing?
Now you’re catching on.
I think I got lost at about the third turn.
I take it that she is so valuable that they were willing to pay a year’s back wages and a fair amount of humiliation to get her back?
I had no idea who she was, but that doesn’t mean much. I generally ignore the MSM. Samizdat is my preference.
No, the arbitrator was independent, and thus certainly did not take instructions from one party. I assume her union contract requires arbitration; they usually do.
Fine, they were forced to hire her back. Sticker on the society page. For that matter, do newspapers even have society pages anymore?
Yes, but the locals no longer get the coverage — it’s all Hollywood gossip now.
Even the MAGAs at Daily Wire are embarrassing themselves by becoming the Daily Panettiere.
the obits.
Fine. The paper can decide to reorganize and begin a reduction of the workforce, starting with the opinion journalists department, of which she is a member
Give her a broom, a mop & bucket, and make her clean the toilets.
Right where she belongs.
The NYT should put Attiah in an office with no windows in the building’s basement. She can rant from there all she wants and no one will hear her.
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