Attiah announced she was fired after editors deemed her social media commentary "unacceptable", including a post made following the assassin
Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah announced she was fired last week after editors deemed her social media commentary, including a post made following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, as “unacceptable.”
In a statement posted to Substack on Monday, Attiah said she was accused of “gross misconduct” and of “endangering the physical safety of colleagues.” She called the allegations “charges without evidence, which I reject completely as false.”
Attiah argued her posts were measured and focused, not on Kirk but on America’s growing tolerance for 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 wrote.
“Nothing I said was new or false or disparaging – it is descriptive, and supported by data,” she added.
In her statement, Attiah said her only direct reference to Kirk was to cite his “own words” that Black women lacked “the brain processing power to be taken seriously” and needed to “steal a white person’s slot.”
The dismissal comes amid a wave of firings and suspensions in the media for comments made about Kirk after his killing.
MSNBC parted ways with analyst Matthew Dowd, who described the Turning Point USA founder as a “divisive” figure who pushed “hate speech” on-air in coverage just after the killing.
