September 15, 2025
‘Now, I am the one being silenced—for doing my job,” Karen Attiah wrote in a scathing Substack post on Sept. 15.
A Washington Post columnist said she was fired over social media posts on gun control and race following Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
In a scathing Substack post on Sept. 15, writer Karen Attiah criticized the Jeff Bezos-owned media outlet for firing the last Black full-time opinion columnist over her social media posts addressing political violence, following recent shootings in Utah, where Kirk was killed, and Colorado, where a teen opened fire at his high school, injuring two students before taking his own life.
“As a columnist, I used my voice to defend freedom and democracy, challenge power and reflect on culture and politics with honesty and conviction,” Attiah wrote. “Now, I am the one being silenced—for doing my job.”
Screenshots of Attiah’s Bluesky posts reveal her outrage over what she views as America’s complacency toward gun violence, particularly among white Americans, who offer “thoughts and prayers” instead of taking action after horrific shootings. She also highlighted her most widely shared thread on the political assassinations of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, clarifying that the post was not about Kirk, “who was horribly murdered.”
“I pointed to the familiar pattern of America shrugging off gun deaths, and giving compassion for white men who commit and espouse political violence,” Attiah explained.
However, after 11 years at the Post, Attiah says she was fired after the outlet deemed her Bluesky posts as “unacceptable,” displaying “gross misconduct” and that they endangered the physical safety of colleagues, all allegations she says are “without evidence” and “completely false.”
“They rushed to fire me without even a conversation—claiming disparagement on race,” Attiah wrote. “This was not only a hasty overreach, but a violation of the very standards of journalistic fairness and rigor the Post claims to uphold.”
With the dismissal of the last Black full-time opinion columnist at the outlet in a diverse city, “Washington, D.C., no longer has a paper that reflects the people it serves,” Attiah said. She views her firing not only as an example of increasing silencing and censorship, but as “part of a broader purge of Black voices from academia, business, government, and media.”
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