Karen Attiah, a former Washington Post opinion columnist, said she was fired by the newspaper after social media posts she made in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk and a separate Colorado school shooting.
In a post on her Substack on Monday, Attiah said she had posted on the Bluesky platform "in the aftermath of the horrific shootings in Utah and Colorado" and that her posts condemned "America’s acceptance of political violence and criticized its ritualized responses — the hollow, cliched calls for ‘thoughts and prayers’ and ‘this is not who we are' that normalize gun violence and absolve white perpetrators especially, while nothing is done to curb deaths." She provided screenshots of the posts in her Substack note.
Attiah said one of her posts quoted comments she attributed to Charlie Kirk and that she had directly cited Kirk's own words that were on the record. In a Bluesky post reproduced on Substack, she wrote: "'Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a [W]hite person’s slot' - Charlie Kirk." Reuters and other outlets have reported that in July 2023 Kirk made a remark during his show referencing specific Black public figures, rather than articulating a broad claim about all Black women.
Attiah wrote that the Post informed her that her posts were "unacceptable," constituted "gross misconduct" and allegedly endangered the physical safety of colleagues — characterizations she called false and unsupported. "They rushed to fire me without even a conversation," she wrote, calling the dismissal a "hasty overreach" and a violation of journalistic fairness.
The Washington Post did not respond to a request for comment on personnel matters, and a spokesperson declined to comment when contacted, according to Attiah's account. The Post's publicly posted social media guidelines advise that "Post journalists should ensure that their activity on social media platforms would not make reasonable people question their editorial independence, nor make reasonable people question The Post’s ability to cover issues fairly."
Attiah, who joined the Post in 2014, also said she had been the newspaper's last Black full-time opinion columnist and framed her dismissal as part of a broader pattern she described as a purge of Black voices from institutions including academia, business, government and media. She wrote that her commentary about what she called "racial double standards" and America's "empathy towards guns" was the basis for the Post's action.
The posts and Attiah's account of her firing came after a deadly incident at a Utah campus event in which conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was shot and killed, and a separate shooting at a Colorado school the same day that left two students injured and the assailant dead. The events prompted renewed public debate over political violence, social media conduct and newsroom standards for employee speech.
Attiah included a photograph in her Substack of herself with Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and said the Post no longer reflected the city it serves. She said the newspaper's move to dismiss her would have a chilling effect on journalists and public writers who speak about race and violence.
Journalists' use of social media has become a frequent subject of newsroom policy updates in recent years as news organizations seek to balance reporters' public commentary with perceptions of editorial independence. The Washington Post's guidelines emphasize that staff social media activity should not create reasonable questions about the outlet's impartiality.
A memorial and vigil was held in Washington, D.C., following Kirk's assassination. The shootings and subsequent personnel dispute at a major national newspaper highlight tensions between newsroom social media rules, the public role of opinion columnists and ongoing national debates about political violence and race.