Everyone involved in this dispute agrees on one point. The Washington Post fired Karen Attiah over her online commentary about Charlie Kirk. The only real dispute is whether the quality of that online commentary rose to a fireable offense for a "journalist" working for the newspaper.
Falsifying quotes to smear a murder victim does not rise to a firing offense, according to a private arbitrator who reviewed Attiah's challenge to her termination. The New York Times reports on the order to rehire Attiah without reporting on what got her fired in the first place:
A private arbitrator has ordered The Washington Post to rehire the opinion columnist Karen Attiah, who was fired in September over her social media posts about the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. It 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, according to a copy of the decision shared with The New York Times by Ms. Attiah’s lawyers.
“The Washington Post failed to establish the grievant engaged in gross misconduct,” Ms. Espinosa wrote.
In a statement, Ms. Attiah said that she hoped the decision “sends a message to journalists and media institutions everywhere that freedom of expression is always worth fighting for.” She said that she was “willing to go back” to her work at The Post, which she called “one of the world’s most storied newspapers.”
The NYT reports this as the catalyst for the termination:
Ms. Attiah’s remarks about Mr. Kirk’s assassination, which she 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,” Ms. Attiah wrote in one of the posts.
Ahem. That is not what got Attiah fired, as Jim Treacher reminds us by providing "one of the posts" that mattered more:
I had forgotten that she lied about him the day he was murdered. No time to waste, right? pic.twitter.com/mteXnn7umc
— jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL) August 24, 2026
At the time, Attiah insisted that she'd gotten fired for repeating Charlie's "words on record." As I explained, Attiah actually changed a quote provided by the Guardian that had itself been taken out of context:
Attiah sources this from an article rushed out by The Guardian less than 24 hours after Kirk's death that attempted to argue sotto voce that Kirk had it coming. Even if one grants the Guardian the presumption that they took his words in context, Attiah changed the quote the Guardian provided at the link she used as a reference. This is the quote that the Guardian allegedly pulled from Kirk's show in July 2023:
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 go be taken somewhat seriously.
Note that the quote doesn't include the phrase "black women" at all. Kirk referenced four specific black women in this criticism, arguing that their own words made them look like affirmative-action charity cases. The "you" in this case refers to the four women he named. Attiah rewrote this quote to make it sound as though Kirk was talking about all black women.
That is journalistic fraud. And that is likely why the Post just handed Attiah her walking papers.
The Post actually made the "why" clear in their termination letter:
Among other requirements, the Company-wide social media policy mandates that all employee social media postings be respectful and prohibits postings that disparage people based on their race, gender or other protected characteristics. The policy also reminds employees that everything they post is a reflection on the Company and should not affect the integrity of The Post’s journalism. Your postings on Bluesky (which clearly identifies you as a Post Columnist) about white men in response to the killing of Charlie Kirk do not comply with our policy. For example, you posted: “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” and “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.”
In addition, just last year, Opinions leadership asked everyone in the Opinions Department to review the newsroom social media guidelines, attached those guidelines to an email to the Department for review, and reiterated in that email the “bedrock principle that our use of social media must never harm the journalistic integrity or reputation of The Post”.
The poor judgment exhibited by your public comments regarding Charlie Kirk arise against the backdrop of documented performance concerns, which have been raised with you. Given these concerns, and in light of your recent unacceptable Bluesky posts, we cannot tolerate the risk your performance poses to The Post.
So what happens next? The termination letter makes very clear that the Post no longer wants any association with Attiah, even though she told the NYT that she would be willing to return. A WaPo spokesperson told the NYT that the paper "respects the arbitration process," but that does not necessarily mean that they will accept it. The paper almost certainly can challenge this decision in court, and Jeff Bezos may be inclined to spend the money on that fight. Otherwise, Bezos will have to accept the idea that journalists can publish false quotes without consequence while their lies help accelerate the mistrust of media among Americans.
It might be tough to fight this, depending on the way the WaPo's contracts and employee agreements are structured. Arbitration clauses usually have language making the decisions binding. Bezos has the money to make Attiah a test case. In the meantime, expect the Post to start changing the language in those documents, if they have not already done so. And don't hold your breath waiting for Attiah's next column at the Post.
Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.
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