Prominent opinion columnist and editor Karen Attiah has been fired from The Washington Post over a series of posts she wrote following the murder of Charlie Kirk.
Attiah, 39, said she was sacked last week over the ‘unacceptable social media posts’ in the wake of the conservative commentator’s assassination in Utah.
One read: ‘Part 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.’
Another of the posts, on social media platform Bluesky, said: ‘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.’
The journalist revealed her firing in a lengthy post on Substack on Monday, which she titled ‘The Washington Post Fired Me — But My Voice Will Not Be Silenced.’
‘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,’ Attiah wrote.
‘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.’