Washington Post fires reporter in center of online battle

NEW YORK (AP) — The Washington Put up has fired Felicia Sonmez, who brought on a vigorous on the web discussion this 7 days about social media plan and general public therapy of colleagues immediately after she criticized a fellow reporter for retweeting an offensive joke.

The Publish said Friday it would not comment on staff troubles. But a duplicate of a termination letter despatched Thursday, accusing her of “insubordination, maligning your coworkers on the net and violating the Post’s requirements on office collegiality and inclusivity” was printed on the Mediaite website and quoted in other information accounts.

The outspoken political author, whose 2nd stint at the Publish started in 2018, declined remark Friday.

The incident began when Sonmez tweeted a display screen shot of an offensive joke that a colleague, Dave Weigel, experienced despatched out on Twitter, adding the comment: “Fantastic to work at a information outlet wherever retweets like this are permitted.” The Post suspended Weigel for a month for his retweet, according to released studies.

That prompted yet another reporter, Jose Del Genuine, to criticize Sonmez online. Although declaring Weigel had been erroneous, Del True termed for compassion. “Rallying the Internet to attack him for a mistake he designed doesn’t really clear up anything,” he wrote.

That led to a contentious back again-and-forth, with Sonmez accusing Del True of attacking her.

As an online discussion widened and drew in more people today, Put up executive editor Sally Buzbee sent out two memos contacting on workers associates to demonstrate regard for each and every other. The next, on Tuesday, was a lot more stern: Buzbee wrote that “we do not tolerate colleagues attacking colleagues either confront to facial area or on the web.”

As it consumed more attention, a handful of Publish workers tweeted their support of the newspaper as a fantastic place to perform. Sonmez mentioned that these people were being between the newspaper’s very best-paid stars, and recommended there has been a longstanding double regular in how social media policy is utilized to them.

She also retweeted a display shot that reported Del Real had blocked her on Twitter, adding the remark, “So I hear the Washington Publish is a collegial office.”

Although it was consuming attention, yet another Article reporter, Lisa Rein, tweeted to Sonmez: “please prevent.”

Sonmez, who labored at the Publish in the early 2010s, still left and rejoined, sued the Write-up and its top rated editors past yr, charging discrimination in barring her from covering stories similar to sexual assault after she had beforehand gone general public as an assault sufferer herself.

In the termination letter, signed by Human Sources Officer Wayne Connell, the Put up said that in questioning the motives of colleagues, Sonmez was undermining the Post’s name for journalistic integrity and fairness.

“The identical is legitimate of your baseless derision directed to our policies and techniques, and our determination to a safe and supportive work atmosphere,” he wrote.

Sonmez’s union, the Washington-Baltimore Information Guild, claimed it is committed to making sure that workers are only disciplined with just lead to, but that it did not remark on personal personnel issues.

Just one Publish columnist, Karen Attiah, tweeted on Friday that Sonmez had “always been amazingly variety and supportive” of her, and had reached out when Attiah experienced been the concentrate on of on the web abuse.