Karen Attiah, a noted Washington Post opinion columnist, said Monday that she had been fired over social media posts in the aftermath of the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Kirk was fatally shot last week, allegedly by a lone gunman who is now in police custody.
Attiah’s firing adds to the widespread effort to crack down on the political left and those critical of Kirk ― who introduced a new generation to far-right beliefs ― and serves as the latest example of the Post’s ongoing evolution toward hyper-conservative opinion pages.
During her 11 years at the Post, Attiah wrote columns, was the newspaper’s first Global Opinions editor, and shared a 2019 George Polk award with writer David Ignatius “for eloquence and resolve in demanding accountability in the wake of the gruesome murder of Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.”
“I was the last remaining Black full-time opinion columnist at the Post, in one of the nation’s most diverse regions. Washington D.C. no longer has a paper that reflects the people it serves,” Attiah wrote in a Substack post Monday. “What happened to me is part of a broader purge of Black voices from academia, business, government, and media — a historical pattern as dangerous as it is shameful — and tragic.”
