The Washington Post fired a longtime staff member and columnist after she posted a fake Charlie Kirk quote and other inflammatory rhetoric just hours after the conservative activist’s assassination.
On Monday, columnist Karen Attiah revealed that she had been fired by the Washington Post the week before. In a Substack post, she claimed she was fired for having “spoke out against hatred and violence in America.” However, she then admitted that the exact reason for her firing was her social media posts on Bluesky, including a bigoted, fake quote attributed to Kirk, just hours after his assassination.
“Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot,” she said in a post just four hours after Kirk was declared dead, attributing it to him and offering no further context. It was the only post in which she attributed any quotes to Kirk.
Kirk never said this, but she likely got the idea from a viral series of social media posts that attributed the exact quote to him.
The likely origin of the slander was a clip from Kirk’s podcast, during which he denigrated former first lady Michelle Obama, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, then-Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, and commentator Joy Reid, after the latter two said they were products of affirmative action. Obama had implied the same in other remarks, while conservatives have argued Jackson was a recipient based on former President Joe Biden’s pledge that he would only nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court.
“I really have to wonder … if we would have said, three weeks ago … if we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racist,” Kirk said.
“But now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us. They’re coming out and they’re saying, ‘I’m only here because affirmative action.’ Yeah, we know, you do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously,” he added.
In her Substack post about the firing, Attiah said her “commentary received thoughtful engagement across platforms, support, and virtually no public backlash.”
“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. They rushed to fire me without even a conversation — claiming disparagement on race. This was not only a hasty overreach, but a violation of the very standards of journalistic fairness and rigor the Post claims to uphold,” she added.
Attiah then suggested that her firing was just another part of a racial purge.
“I was the last remaining Black full-time opinion columnist at the Post, in one of the nation’s most diverse regions. Washington, D.C., no longer has a paper that reflects the people it serves. What happened to me is part of a broader purge of Black voices from academia, business, government, and media, a historical pattern as dangerous as it is shameful, and tragic,” she said.
In a post on X lamenting her firing, she claimed the Washington Post fired her over innocent messages lamenting the normalization of violence in the United States, especially by white men.
“Now I am being silenced by the Washington Post for — *checks notes* Lamenting America’s acceptance of apathy towards political violence and gun deaths — especially when the violence is encouraged and carried out by white men,” she wrote.
In the Substack article, she said her only crime was “speaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns.”
Attiah took part in a photoshoot outside of the Washington Post headquarters to serve as the headline photo for her article, featuring her holding a burning Washington Post newspaper like a torch with a rose in her mouth.
The Washington Post’s policies and standards code says that its journalists’ social media accounts implicitly reflect the outlet itself, so they should be used responsibly.
“A Post journalist’s use of social media must not harm the editorial integrity or journalistic reputation of The Post. Your association with The Post gives you a large platform and may bring you a blue checkmark and added followers. Along with that comes our collective responsibility to protect that integrity and reputation,” the code read.
“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,” it continued, adding that “before you publish a post on social media, ask yourself if it compromises our newsroom’s mission to prioritize fact-finding.”
The fake quote wasn’t the only issue, however. Her Bluesky feed in the hours after Kirk’s murder was filled with inflammatory rhetoric.
She approvingly reposted a comment from a follower claiming that the MAGA movement was “pleased” by the June assassination of two Democratic legislators in Minnesota.
Attiah denigrated those interacting with her on the platform, asking if her apparent dismissals of Kirk’s murder were appropriate, asking, “Have I performed enough goodness for you?”
Elsewhere, she tried to undercut the sentiment that people were opposed to violence as a solution within hours of Kirk’s murder.
“If you’ve ever called the (armed) police on someone committing a crime, or voted to increase police funding — then yes, you believe in the threat of lethal violence to deal with others,” Attiah wrote.
One of her posts, just over an hour after Kirk was declared dead, suggested that he was part of the problem and espoused violence.
“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,” Attiah wrote.
She appeared to denigrate Kirk in one Bluesky post, saying, “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.”
Attiah has a long history of inflammatory social media posts. On Oct. 7, 2023, she reposted remarks praising Hamas’s surprise attack against Israel and implicitly defending any atrocities committed. During the turmoil of the George Floyd riots in 2020, she posted an implicit threat against white women, blaming their “tears” for atrocities throughout history and saying they were “lucky” that black people were only calling them “Karens” and not seeking revenge.
The Washington Post Guild said it was standing by Attiah in a statement, claiming the outlet “wrongly fired” her.
“The Post not only flagrantly disregarded standard disciplinary processes, it also undermined its own mandate to be a champion of free speech. The right to speak freely is the ultimate personal liberty and the foundation of Karen’s 11-year career at The Post. We’re proud to call Karen a colleague and a longtime union sibling. The Post Guild stands with her and will continue to support her and defend her rights,” it said.
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Despite a few holdouts, the reception of Attiah’s claims was largely negative on social media. The senior editor for the free speech absolutist Reason magazine said her firing was fully justified as being due to journalistic malpractice.
“The firing of Karen Attiah is a good example of something I do NOT count as cancel culture. She egregiously misquoted Charlie Kirk, which is journalistic malpractice. WaPo fired her, as was their right. Fine by me. It’s not her opinions, it’s bad journalism,” he said in a post on X.