The Washington Post has been ordered by an arbitrator to rehire a Black columnist who clashed with the Opinion page editor who abruptly left the paper just weeks ago.
According to a report from the New York Times, billionaire Jeff Bezos's news organization will rehire opinion columnist Karen Attiah, who was fired in September over her social media posts about the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The arbitrator also ordered the company to compensate her with back pay.
Sarah Miller Espinosa, the arbitrator, said in a written decision Thursday that The Post "did not have good and sufficient cause" to terminate Ms. Attiah and "violated" its labor agreement. "The Washington Post failed to establish the grievant engaged in gross misconduct," Espinosa wrote.
The ruling comes just three weeks after Opinion Editor Adam O'Neal announced his departure after just one year, having previously boasted he expected to stay for years, media watchdog Status previously reported.
During an all-hands meeting, he told Opinion staffers he was leaving for personal family reasons. The explanation caught staff off-guard, given his previously expressed commitment to the role.
The Washington Post said in its termination letter that Attiah's posts about Mr. Kirk had harmed "the integrity" of the organization and violated standards requiring employees to use social media with civility and respect.
Attiah's remarks about Kirk's assassination, posted to the social network Bluesky on Sept. 10, the day he was shot, responded to the outpouring of grief after the shooting.
"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 wrote in one of the posts.
According to the Times, "Lawyers for The Washington Post and Ms. Attiah made their arguments before Ms. Espinosa in June during a hearing that included testimony from Ms. Attiah; Adam O’Neal, then the opinion editor at The Washington Post; and Wayne Connell, the company’s chief human resources officer. Ms. Attiah was represented by Democracy Defenders Action, a progressive nonprofit co-founded by the lawyer Norman Eisen, and by the Washington-Baltimore News Guild."
In his testimony, O'Neal said that he saw Attiah's posts the morning after Kirk died and sent them to Connell.
"Karen's social media feed yesterday and today is beyond the pale, completely unacceptable for someone associated with Opinions," O'Neal wrote, the Times is reporting.
Soon after, O'Neal and Connell met with Will Lewis, then the chief executive of The Washington Post, to discuss the posts. They ultimately decided to fire Attiah.
