Washington Post ordered to rehire fired columnist

The Washington Post has been ordered to rehire fired columnist Karen Attiah, who was dismissed over social media posts she made following the assassination of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk in September. Attiah was accused of gross misconduct and violating the Post's social media policies, according to the paper's own reporting.

An arbitrator ruled that the Post did not have good and sufficient cause for her dismissal, ordering the newspaper to rehire Attiah and compensate her with back pay. Attiah, who had worked at the Post for 11 years, was the last remaining Black full-time opinion columnist at the time of her firing. In her social media posts, Attiah criticized Kirk's racist comments about Black women and the Trump administration's portrayal of him as a martyr for the conservative cause.

She had previously recruited Khashoggi, a murdered Saudi journalist, to write for the Post and published his posthumous last column advocating for free expression in the region.