There’s nothing a union loves more than an incompetent worker.
The New York Times informs us that a private arbitrator sided with the Washington-Baltimore News Guild and ordered the Washington Post to rehire opinion columnist Karen Attiah, who was fired last year over her social media posts about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Reading the New York Times, a reader might come away with the impression that Attiah was dismissed for being overly critical of Kirk. (Maybe the New York Times reporter needs to be fired?) No, Attiah was let go over racist posts aimed at “white men” and, among other things, maliciously miscasting a Kirk statement regarding affirmative action to make it sound as if he was calling black women stupid.
“Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot,” Attiah quoted Kirk as saying.
What Kirk actually said was: “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 racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us. … 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 be taken somewhat seriously.”
In the real quote, Kirk accuses others of saying the things that Attiah attributes to him. Any cub journalist, opinion or not, understands that cutting up a quote in this way is unethical. If Attiah couldn’t comprehend Kirk’s long-standing conservative complaint about affirmative action, which is highly possible, she isn’t prepared to be a political journalist. If she did, and then purposely misled her readers, she definitely shouldn’t be a journalist of any kind.
Attiah contends that the Washington Post did not fire her over the Kirk post. But the termination letter notes a history of “documented performance concerns” and the paper’s guidelines note that a “bedrock principle” of the employees “use of social media must never harm the journalistic integrity or reputation of The Post.” And one of the posts specifically brought up by editors as problematic, according to the arbitration decision itself, was the Kirk quote.
Then again, if, as Attiah says, her firing had nothing to do with a deceptive quotation, what stops the Washington Post from firing her again for journalistic malpractice?
The real problem here is the collective bargaining agreement that the Washington Post signed with the guild. It is perplexing that major outlets keep reentering these agreements when there are more people in journalism schools than working journalists.
The arbitration decision in the Attiah case is mostly a legalistic word salad that reminds us that newspaper guilds had a lot to do with the destruction of the industry. Like all unions, they championed seniority over merit and promise, the laziest over the diligent, and the most incompetent over the most promising. Now it is compelling newspapers to employ writers who possess morally repellent opinions.
THE SELF-IMMOLATION OF THE WASHINGTON POST
Whether you believe the Kirk fabrication was just a mistake or a fireable offense, Attiah has been embarrassing the Washington Post for years. She infamously liked a post after the massacre and rape of Oct. 7, 2023, “What do you think decolonization meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays? Losers,” and has never backed away from her terrorism championing. Even if she wasn’t a rank racist, her tenuous understanding of basic history should have disqualified her from a position at a once-prestigious paper.
What Attiah and her fans don’t seem to comprehend is that free speech doesn’t entail compelling others to platform you. This is a victory for unions, not for speech. People have no ethical or constitutional obligation to associate with those who attack their values. Attiah is entitled to take any depraved position she likes. She has no First Amendment right to work for the Washington Post.