Longtime Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah said on Monday that she had been fired by the newspaper last week over “unacceptable” social media posts she made in the wake of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination, adding that she was the last remaining full-time Black opinion writer on staff.
The Washington Post did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Attiah’s termination from the Post comes days after MSNBC fired political analyst Matthew Dowd for describing Kirk – the founder of conservative youth organization Turning Point USA and a prominent MAGA pundit – as a “divisive” figure who pushed “hate speech” shortly after he was shot.
Additionally, there has been an effort led by prominent right-wing influencers and political leaders to target people who have criticized Kirk and seemingly celebrated his death, resulting in numerous employees being fired or suspended after their companies and organizations have been made aware of any anti-Kirk posts.
“As a columnist, I used my voice to defend freedom and democracy, challenge power and reflect on culture and politics with honesty and conviction,” Attiah wrote on Substack. “Now, I am the one being silenced – for doing my job.”
Attiah, the paper’s founding Global Opinions editor who came to prominence following the horrific murder of her columnist Jamal Khashoggi, noted that in the wake of Kirk’s death she had taken to social media to express “sadness and fear for America” while condemning the country’s acceptance of political violence.
“My most widely shared thread was not even about activist Charlie Kirk, who was horribly murdered, but about the political assassinations of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman, her husband and her dog,” she stated. “I pointed to the familiar pattern of America shrugging off gun deaths, and giving compassion for white men who commit and espouse political violence. This cycle has been documented for years. Nothing I said was new or false or disparaging— it is descriptive, and supported by data.”
Adding that she did her “journalistic duty” to remind people that, at the time, no suspect or motive had been identified in Kirk’s killing, she noted that she had only made one direct reference to the slain conservative influencer in her social media posts. In that instance, she quoted Kirk saying that prominent Black women such as Michelle Obama and Shelia Jackson Lee did not have “the brain processing power to be taken seriously” and needed to “steal a white person’s slot.”
“My commentary received thoughtful engagement across platforms, support, and virtually no public backlash,” Attiah wrote.
“And yet, 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,” she continued.
The termination of Attiah also comes a month after she reportedly had a tense standoff with the Post’s newly installed opinion editor Adam O’Neal amid an exodus of staffers following the paper’s conservative shift in the opinion section. Though a number of veteran columnists and journalists had taken the voluntary buyouts the Post was offering to those who felt they didn’t align with the new vision, Attiah instead decided to stay despite her poor meeting with O’Neal.
