Washington Post Union Speaks Out Against Columnist's Firing Over Charlie Kirk Comments

The union representing employees at The Washington Post on Monday condemned the paper for firing columnist Karen Attiah for comments she made about slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

In a statement, the Washington Post Guild said that firing Attiah betrayed the paper's mission to defend free speech in the United States.

"The Post not only flagrantly disregarded standard disciplinary processes, it also undermined its own mandate to be a champion of free speech," the union said. "The right to speak freely is the ultimate personal liberty and the foundation of Karen’s 11-year career at the Post."

The union also said it was "proud to call Karen a colleague and a longtime union sibling" and that it "stands with her and will continue to support her and defend her rights."

Attiah announced on Monday morning that she had been fired from the Post over social media posts in the wake of Kirk's murder that were critical of his legacy but in no way endorsed or celebrated any form of political violence.

"The Post accused my measured Bluesky posts of being 'unacceptable,' 'gross misconduct,' and of endangering the physical safety of colleagues—charges without evidence, which I reject completely as false," she explained. "They rushed to fire me without even a conversation. This was not only a hasty overreach, but a violation of the very standards of journalistic fairness and rigor the Post claims to uphold."

Attiah only directly referenced Kirk once in her posts and said she had condemned the deadly attack on him “without engaging in excessive, false mourning for a man who routinely attacked Black women as a group, put academics in danger by putting them on watch lists, claimed falsely that Black people were better off in the era of Jim Crow, said that the Civil Rights Act was a mistake, and favorably reviewed a book that called liberals 'Unhumans.'"

Independent progressive news site Drop Site News has published a running list on X documenting dozens of people who so far have been fired, suspended, or placed under investigation for their social media posts related to Kirk in the wake of his death. So far, says Drop Site News, over half of those targeted have been educators.