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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