Karen Attiah, a former star columnist at The Washington Post fired after she called out a media double standard about political violence in the wake of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk's murder, spoke out to The Daily Beast, warning that billionaire Amazon founder and Post ownerJeffrey Bezos is twisting the storied newspaper into an instrument to ingratiate himself to President Donald Trump.
“We’re regressing — back to a wealthy class shaping reality to fit what they want,” Attiah, who was the only full-time Black opinion writer for The Post before her dismissal, told The Beast. “Instead, a handful of people [and] companies control what we see. That’s fundamentally anti-democratic."
“Journalists, particularly journalists of color, are facing increased death threats and physical harassment, moving from online to the actual physical realm. People’s lives are at stake — not just our jobs. It’s feeling existential," she continued. "I keep telling people: keep your imagination open for how bad it can get. People used to say, ‘They’re not going after citizens.’ Now they are. The ‘leftist threat’ framing [and] rhetoric keeps escalating. The natural conclusion of dealing with your ‘enemies’ is to eliminate them.”
Once upon a time, Bezos frequently criticized Trump's policies, particularly on immigration, while allowing reporters and columnists the freedom to do as they wish. But he made a hard turn during the last election, intervening to stop the paper from endorsing former Vice President Kamala Harris against Trump, then contributing to Trump's inauguration and announcing the paper would more aggressively seek to promote right-wing economic views.
“I don’t know if we’ve ever seen a major media organization do such an about-face this fast," she said. "This is the paper of Watergate, multiple Pulitzers, the Access Hollywood tape — the thorn in Trump’s side — now completely flipped."
Attiah, who is currently pursuing a labor grievance over her firing, was involved in the hiring of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi-born analyst critical of his home country's regime, to write for The Post a year before that regime assassinated him. Trump caused outrage for obfuscating the nature of Khashoggi's death.
On that particular subject, Attiah had some further harsh words for Bezos, saying, “Don’t you remember Jamal Khashoggi? A man lost his life, and now you’re cozying up to the people who killed him — and helped cover it up."