Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah is now a former Washington Post columnist, and in a Substack essay, she accuses the newspaper of unjustly firing her because of a series of social media posts after the killing of Charlie Kirk. "As a columnist, I used my voice to defend freedom and democracy, challenge power and reflect on culture and politics with honesty and conviction," she writes. "Now, I am the one being silenced—for doing my job." In her Bluesky posts, Attiah "pointed to the familiar pattern of America shrugging off gun deaths, and giving compassion for white men who commit and espouse political violence," she writes on Substack.
"My only direct reference to Kirk was one post—his own words on record," she recounts. She reposted a line by him in which he questioned the "brain processing power" of prominent Black women and accused the women of having to "steal a white person's slot." In the Substack essay, Attiah doubled down on the Kirk criticism:
- "My journalistic and moral values for balance compelled me to condemn violence and murder without engaging in excessive, false mourning for a man who routinely attacked Black women as a group, put academics in danger by putting them on watch lists, claimed falsely that Black people were better off in the era of Jim Crow, said that the Civil Rights Act was a mistake, and favorably reviewed a book that called liberals 'Unhumans.'"
A spokesperson for the Post declined to comment on why Attiah was fired, reports the Hill. Instead, the spokesperson pointed to the public guidelines for the newspaper's journalists.
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