{"id":1619,"date":"2026-08-24T21:08:54","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T21:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=1619"},"modified":"2026-08-24T21:08:54","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T21:08:54","slug":"wapo-ordered-to-rehire-karen-attiah-who-was-fired-for-charlie-kirk-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=1619","title":{"rendered":"WaPo Ordered to Rehire Karen Attiah, Who Was Fired for Charlie Kirk Comments"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<!-- begin partial\/series-card --><\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p><i><span>Support justice-driven, accurate and transparent news \u2014 make a <\/span><\/i><i><span>quick donation<\/span><\/i><i><span> to Truthout today!\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=1617\">El-Sayed\u2019s GOP Opponent Attended 3 AIPAC-Hosted Fundraisers in 1 Day<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>A group dedicated to defending the rule of law from authoritarianism and corruption said it had succeeded in its \u201cmonumental defense of the First Amendment\u201d on Monday after an independent arbitrator ruled that <em>The Washington Post<\/em> had wrongfully fired columnist Karen Attiah last September over social media posts she wrote about assassinated right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, and ordered the newspaper to rehire Attiah.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe ruling marks a landmark moment for press freedom, confirming that corporate media institutions cannot use retaliatory discipline to silence journalists who address uncomfortable truths,\u201d said Democracy Defenders Fund, which signed on to represent Attiah, along with the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, when she filed a grievance against the <em>Post<\/em> arguing she had been wrongfully terminated.<\/p>\n<p>The arbitrator, Sarah Miller Espinosa,  in the binding decision that the <em>Post <\/em>\u201cdid not have good and sufficient cause to terminate\u201d Attiah\u2019s employment, which it did after then-opinion editor Adam O\u2019Neal complained about her social media posts to a human resources officer and then-CEO Will Lewis.<\/p>\n<p>Espinosa ordered the <em>Post<\/em> to provide Attiah with full back pay and benefits. Attiah has said she would be \u201cwilling to go back\u201d to the newspaper.<\/p>\n<p>In her posts, Attiah suggested that while influential figures on the far right demanded what she called \u201cperformative mourning\u201d for Kirk, who was known for \u201cdebating\u201d liberal college students and was fatally shot at an event at Utah Valley University, America had \u201cshrugged and moved on\u201d after other acts of political violence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPart 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,\u201d said Attiah, who worked at the <em>Post<\/em> for 11 years, on Bluesky. \u201cRefusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence is\u2026 not the same as violence.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Post<\/em> executives met without Attiah and decided to fire her, with chief human resources officer Wayne Connell accusing her in writing of \u201cgross misconduct\u201d and violations of the <em>Post<\/em>\u2019s social media policies that could \u201charm the integrity of our organization.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>They fired her because she wasn\u2019t deferential to Charlie Kirk and other white dudes like him enough. It was an egregious firing. Not nearly enough free speech folks rallied around her. https:\/\/t.co\/WM1eL4HsSA<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=1615\">Jeffries Secretly Met With Kushner to Find \u201cCommon Ground\u201d on Immigration<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 @ijbailey (@ijbailey) August 24, 2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Espinosa noted in her decision that, as the Washington-Baltimore News Guild argued during the arbitration proceedings, \u201cthere were clearly external pressures to fire Ms. Attiah after the Kirk murder,\u201d as \u201cthere were widespread calls to fire people who expressed opinions at all critical of Charlie Kirk, including by prominent elected officials such as Vice President JD Vance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A <em>Reuters<\/em> investigation in November 2025 estimated that about 600 people were fired, investigated, disciplined, or suspended from their jobs in the weeks after Kirk was assassinated.<\/p>\n<p>Attiah testified at an arbitration hearing in June that her posts had been part of her work as an opinion columnist, where it was within her duties to comment \u201con our discourse on political violence.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The arbitrator\u2019s decision, said Attiah, \u201cconfirms what we\u2019ve said from the start: I was doing my job as an opinion journalist, and doing that job is not misconduct.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfter spending over a decade of my career at the <em>Post<\/em> as an editor and an opinion columnist focusing on race, gender, and global human rights, I\u2019m relieved to finally have that record set straight,\u201d she continued. \u201cI am grateful to everyone at the Guild and Democracy Defenders who stood behind me through this nearly yearlong battle. I hope that this win sends a message to journalists and media institutions everywhere that freedom of expression is always worth fighting for.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Espinosa said in her ruling that the <em>Post <\/em>failed to make a convincing case that Attiah had \u201cdisparaged white men\u201d as a group in her social media posts or that she was \u201cresponsible for potentially endangering her colleagues\u201d and for \u201cthreats of violence made by bad actors\u201d against the <em>Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Post<\/em>\u2019s implication that Attiah had endangered the newspaper and its staff was \u201cwholly rejected as justification for the termination,\u201d wrote Espinosa.<\/p>\n<p>Norm Eisen, co-founder and executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, said the decision was \u201ca thunderous victory for Karen Attiah, an award-winning journalist fired for doing her job, over Bezos\u2019 <em>Washington Post<\/em>,\u201d referring to Jeff Bezos, the billionaire Amazon founder who purchased the newspaper in 2013 and last year called for the opinion section to focus on \u201cpersonal liberties and free markets.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe <em>Post<\/em> tried to pass off retaliation as discipline, but the rule of law has exposed it for what it truly is: wrongful termination,\u201d said Eisen. \u201cThis is a landmark win for every journalist who refuses to be silenced.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=1613\">Trump Admin Report Claims 24,000 Noncitizens Voted in 2020. Experts Doubt It.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The independent arbitrator also ordered The Washington Post to provide Attiah with full back pay and benefits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>WaPo Ordered to Rehire Karen Attiah, Who Was Fired for Charlie Kirk Comments - Smart Moving Home<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=1619\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"WaPo Ordered to Rehire Karen Attiah, Who Was Fired for Charlie Kirk Comments - 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