Washington Post fires reporter Felicia Somnez who objected to misogynistic tweets

[Anonymous]

Sonmez, who in 2021 sued the paper for discrimination (the suit was recently dismissed; she plans to appeal), has been outspoken over the past week about issues related to inequity in the newsroom.

In her public comments Sonmez had been highly critical of The Post's leadership, including Executive Editor Sally Buzbee, along with many of her colleagues.

At times, some of her colleagues went on Twitter to plead with Sonmez to stop attacking The Post on social media.

Jose A. Del Real, a reporter at The Post, responded on Twitter Saturday to Sonmez's initial tweet. Del Real said Weigel's tweet was "terrible and unacceptable."

"But," he added, "rallying the internet to attack him for a mistake he made doesn't actually solve anything. We all mess up in some way or another. There is such a thing as challenging with compassion."

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/06/09/media/felicia-sonmez-washington-post/index.html


She sounds awful.

[Anonymous]

Also, she was given several warnings to stop her behavior. She had a choice, but continued—sounds like a loose cannon.

[Anonymous]

One last thought—it sounds like her previous lawsuit was only recently dismissed. Perhaps her unprofessional behavior was due to anger about that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sonmez, who in 2021 sued the paper for discrimination (the suit was recently dismissed; she plans to appeal), has been outspoken over the past week about issues related to inequity in the newsroom.

In her public comments Sonmez had been highly critical of The Post's leadership, including Executive Editor Sally Buzbee, along with many of her colleagues.

At times, some of her colleagues went on Twitter to plead with Sonmez to stop attacking The Post on social media.

Jose A. Del Real, a reporter at The Post, responded on Twitter Saturday to Sonmez's initial tweet. Del Real said Weigel's tweet was "terrible and unacceptable."

"But," he added, "rallying the internet to attack him for a mistake he made doesn't actually solve anything. We all mess up in some way or another. There is such a thing as challenging with compassion."

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/06/09/media/felicia-sonmez-washington-post/index.html


She sounds awful.

Somnez tweeted a pic of Weigel’s retweet. She then tweeted pics of people criticizing and threatening her. That’s when Del Real replied to her tweets.

She replied to Del Real’s tweets and then the internet mob came for Del Real. I don’t think she’s to blame for Twitter attacks on Del Real and Weigel isn’t at fault for Twitter attacks on Somnez. But Del Real felt she was responsible—guess he didn’t like being on the receiving end of threats that female journalists regularly get.

Somnez could’ve handled it better but the Post was clearly protecting Weigel and I can see how she grew increasingly outraged.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sonmez, who in 2021 sued the paper for discrimination (the suit was recently dismissed; she plans to appeal), has been outspoken over the past week about issues related to inequity in the newsroom.

In her public comments Sonmez had been highly critical of The Post's leadership, including Executive Editor Sally Buzbee, along with many of her colleagues.

At times, some of her colleagues went on Twitter to plead with Sonmez to stop attacking The Post on social media.

Jose A. Del Real, a reporter at The Post, responded on Twitter Saturday to Sonmez's initial tweet. Del Real said Weigel's tweet was "terrible and unacceptable."

"But," he added, "rallying the internet to attack him for a mistake he made doesn't actually solve anything. We all mess up in some way or another. There is such a thing as challenging with compassion."

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/06/09/media/felicia-sonmez-washington-post/index.html


She sounds awful.

It can be simultaneously true that she is awful (which indeed seems to be the case) and the Post is a very sexist institution whose reporting on anything involving women can’t be trusted, and that looks the other way at misogynist reporters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sonmez, who in 2021 sued the paper for discrimination (the suit was recently dismissed; she plans to appeal), has been outspoken over the past week about issues related to inequity in the newsroom.

In her public comments Sonmez had been highly critical of The Post's leadership, including Executive Editor Sally Buzbee, along with many of her colleagues.

At times, some of her colleagues went on Twitter to plead with Sonmez to stop attacking The Post on social media.

Jose A. Del Real, a reporter at The Post, responded on Twitter Saturday to Sonmez's initial tweet. Del Real said Weigel's tweet was "terrible and unacceptable."

"But," he added, "rallying the internet to attack him for a mistake he made doesn't actually solve anything. We all mess up in some way or another. There is such a thing as challenging with compassion."

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/06/09/media/felicia-sonmez-washington-post/index.html

So please fill me in—when did they look the other way?
She sounds awful.

It can be simultaneously true that she is awful (which indeed seems to be the case) and the Post is a very sexist institution whose reporting on anything involving women can’t be trusted, and that looks the other way at misogynist reporters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sonmez, who in 2021 sued the paper for discrimination (the suit was recently dismissed; she plans to appeal), has been outspoken over the past week about issues related to inequity in the newsroom.

In her public comments Sonmez had been highly critical of The Post's leadership, including Executive Editor Sally Buzbee, along with many of her colleagues.

At times, some of her colleagues went on Twitter to plead with Sonmez to stop attacking The Post on social media.

Jose A. Del Real, a reporter at The Post, responded on Twitter Saturday to Sonmez's initial tweet. Del Real said Weigel's tweet was "terrible and unacceptable."

"But," he added, "rallying the internet to attack him for a mistake he made doesn't actually solve anything. We all mess up in some way or another. There is such a thing as challenging with compassion."

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/06/09/media/felicia-sonmez-washington-post/index.html

So please fill me in—when did they look the other way?
She sounds awful.

It can be simultaneously true that she is awful (which indeed seems to be the case) and the Post is a very sexist institution whose reporting on anything involving women can’t be trusted, and that looks the other way at misogynist reporters.

So please fill me in? When have they looked the other way? They got rid of Tom Toles and Gene Weingarten for their actions. What else has there been that wasn’t addressed?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sonmez, who in 2021 sued the paper for discrimination (the suit was recently dismissed; she plans to appeal), has been outspoken over the past week about issues related to inequity in the newsroom.

In her public comments Sonmez had been highly critical of The Post's leadership, including Executive Editor Sally Buzbee, along with many of her colleagues.

At times, some of her colleagues went on Twitter to plead with Sonmez to stop attacking The Post on social media.

Jose A. Del Real, a reporter at The Post, responded on Twitter Saturday to Sonmez's initial tweet. Del Real said Weigel's tweet was "terrible and unacceptable."

"But," he added, "rallying the internet to attack him for a mistake he made doesn't actually solve anything. We all mess up in some way or another. There is such a thing as challenging with compassion."

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/06/09/media/felicia-sonmez-washington-post/index.html

So please fill me in—when did they look the other way?
She sounds awful.

It can be simultaneously true that she is awful (which indeed seems to be the case) and the Post is a very sexist institution whose reporting on anything involving women can’t be trusted, and that looks the other way at misogynist reporters.

So please fill me in? When have they looked the other way? They got rid of Tom Toles and Gene Weingarten for their actions. What else has there been that wasn’t addressed?

Didn’t those two retire?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sonmez, who in 2021 sued the paper for discrimination (the suit was recently dismissed; she plans to appeal), has been outspoken over the past week about issues related to inequity in the newsroom.

In her public comments Sonmez had been highly critical of The Post's leadership, including Executive Editor Sally Buzbee, along with many of her colleagues.

At times, some of her colleagues went on Twitter to plead with Sonmez to stop attacking The Post on social media.

Jose A. Del Real, a reporter at The Post, responded on Twitter Saturday to Sonmez's initial tweet. Del Real said Weigel's tweet was "terrible and unacceptable."

"But," he added, "rallying the internet to attack him for a mistake he made doesn't actually solve anything. We all mess up in some way or another. There is such a thing as challenging with compassion."

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/06/09/media/felicia-sonmez-washington-post/index.html

So please fill me in—when did they look the other way?
She sounds awful.

It can be simultaneously true that she is awful (which indeed seems to be the case) and the Post is a very sexist institution whose reporting on anything involving women can’t be trusted, and that looks the other way at misogynist reporters.

So please fill me in? When have they looked the other way? They got rid of Tom Toles and Gene Weingarten for their actions. What else has there been that wasn’t addressed?

Didn’t those two retire?

Well that was the outward excuse given. In Tom Toles case it happened right after his costume party where one of the attendees wore bl**k face. In Gene Weingarten’s case he retired after an unfortunate article where he made fun of an ethnic cuisine, can’t remember which one. He was lambasted in Letters to the Editor

[Anonymous]

Hopes she gets hired as the CNN reporter in Shanghai.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also, she was given several warnings to stop her behavior. She had a choice, but continued—sounds like a loose cannon.

+1 although I think she sounds like my 2 year old when he's having a temper tantrum. At this point whatever point she is trying to make is lost because of her poor behavior.

It is hard to see how she could ever be trusted as a reporter in the future and expect people to want to read what she has written because she has gone so far overboard. I know I would skip her article whenever I saw her byline simply because of her clear vitriolic and hyperbolic writings. She had a point, but when she was challenged her response vis a vis the personal attacks and clear animus made her distasteful and now her writing is irrelevant because of the clear bias.

She deserved to be fired because of her behavior and I wouldn't be surprised if she is completely unable to find employment with any legitimate news agency. She might be better off migrating over the New York Post. They are right up her alley.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sonmez, who in 2021 sued the paper for discrimination (the suit was recently dismissed; she plans to appeal), has been outspoken over the past week about issues related to inequity in the newsroom.

In her public comments Sonmez had been highly critical of The Post's leadership, including Executive Editor Sally Buzbee, along with many of her colleagues.

At times, some of her colleagues went on Twitter to plead with Sonmez to stop attacking The Post on social media.

Jose A. Del Real, a reporter at The Post, responded on Twitter Saturday to Sonmez's initial tweet. Del Real said Weigel's tweet was "terrible and unacceptable."

"But," he added, "rallying the internet to attack him for a mistake he made doesn't actually solve anything. We all mess up in some way or another. There is such a thing as challenging with compassion."

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/06/09/media/felicia-sonmez-washington-post/index.html

So please fill me in—when did they look the other way?
She sounds awful.

It can be simultaneously true that she is awful (which indeed seems to be the case) and the Post is a very sexist institution whose reporting on anything involving women can’t be trusted, and that looks the other way at misogynist reporters.

So please fill me in? When have they looked the other way? They got rid of Tom Toles and Gene Weingarten for their actions. What else has there been that wasn’t addressed?

Didn’t those two retire?

Well that was the outward excuse given. In Tom Toles case it happened right after his costume party where one of the attendees wore bl**k face. In Gene Weingarten’s case he retired after an unfortunate article where he made fun of an ethnic cuisine, can’t remember which one. He was lambasted in Letters to the Editor

Why wouldn’t the Post take a stand and do more than just letting them retire?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She acted crazy on Twitter. Coworkers shouldn’t be blasted online like that.

Um, you mean like the guy who wrote that all women are bipolar or bisexual? That guy who still has a job at the WaPo?

He got reprimanded, suspended, didn’t he? Did you want him to get fired for a stupid tweet?

You mean like she got fired for pointing out he made a stupid (misogynistic to be more accurate) tweet that insulted half of his coworkers? Collegiality my butt.

He literally didn’t make the tweet. And it was a bad dad joke that most sane people didn’t even care about.

Ok Wiegel. He shared the tweet. If I had done that in a public forum, my place of work would have fired him. And the dads I know don't talk about women in that way.

It's Weigel, not Wiegel. You work at a different place. He's not a dad.

The guy apologized, instantly, and was suspended without pay for a month. He is a good reporter who is usually goofy but not offensive on Twitter. I really don't see the possible justification for punishing him worse than this, over such a dumb thing.

I don't get why this poster is calling this a dad joke. Dad jokes are puns or corny humor. They're not insulting to half the population. Dads have daughters too.

I think maybe we are just going to disagree over how offensive the tweet was. I thought it was stupid, and offensive, but not burn it all down bad. I thought Weigel responded appropriately with his apology - and that a month's suspension without pay seemed extreme, but ok. You clearly see it as much worse than I did, and than many other people did. But there's a lot of you, too, so I have to acknowledge that as well.

I don't know. This whole thing just seemed to spiral out of control in a pretty crazy way.

I think you're used to a permissive work culture. I think many companies would have fired staff over that tweet--social media policies govern staff behavior and you're not supposed to do things publicly that make you/your employer look bad. Which is why I think it's awful that they fired the lady reporter...saying she had been criticizing other staff (i.e. making the WaPo look bad).

She was insubordinate. He wasn't. I think this is pretty clear. The workplace had devolved into chaos, and she kept making it worse - and they would never have any control whatsoever if she didn't face consequences.

I've worked places with permissive social media cultures and some without (I am freelance now but my last full time job forbade us from posting anything about politics at all on our personal social media, because we worked with a lot of lawmakers on both sides and it was thought that this could hurt our ability to do that if we expressed any thoughts about policies - that one was hard to abide during the Trump years, let me tell you).

"Insubordinate". Yet she persisted... I don't know about your workplace, but I wouldn't want to work somewhere that let a guy tweet like that about women.

That tweet was lame, at best. If you get offended by weak crap like that, then I can’t imagine how you would be at a work happy hour.

The tweets and that he felt ok posting it says a lot about the workplace culture at WaPo. He knew he would ok.

+1

Honestly it’s a pretty clear indication of the type of abhorrent behavior that the Post tolerates from men. I would not want to work there as a woman.

Ummm he got suspended without pay for a month.

And she got fired for complaining about the tweet and the fact that the WaPo didn’t punish him

That’s not why she was fired. You can read her dismissal letter upstream. The guy screwed up and was disciplined for it. She could not let it go and continued to post attacks on her employer. Would your employer keep you on if you did that? Mine sure as hell wouldn’t. The punishment fit the crime and, as a woman, I find her an embarrassment. Completely unprofessional.

As a woman, I think the fact that she was firing for refusing to “let go” of the upset she felt about a coworker posting misogynistic tweets disturbing. If he posted racist memes about black people, would the Post have fired her for being upset by racism? Seems like a hostile work environment for women.

DP, but (as another woman) your take is bizarre. Have you never had a job? If you think it’s OK for you to attack all your co-workers for days on end because you are “upset” about something, and continue to do so after your boss tells you you absolutely need to stop, you are wrong, and you too are likely to find yourself fired. For the millionth time, this reporter was not fired for objecting to her co-worker’s obnoxious and clueless retweet. She was fired for repeated violations of her company policy and for ignoring her boss’s directives.

How anyone can stick up for this reporter’s actions is beyond me. She showed zero professionalism throughout the whole saga, and she completely undercut any point she otherwise might have been able to make about how offensive Weigel’s retweet was. Good riddance.

I’m not that PP. I don’t object to her being fired. I object to how leniently he was treated by the Post for overtly misogynist behavior.

It was a retweet of a awful dad joke that he immediately un-retweeted and apologized for….

It’s his actions after the fact that made his punishment not as severe. I can see if he left it up and double-downed on it. But he took action to remove it.

I can’t believe that people don’t understand this. And I can’t even stand Weigel.

DP. I agree that Weigel was not treated leniently if this was a first offense; I think the suspension was fair, and could entertain an argument that a less harsh punishment might also be fair for a first offense, though it was terrible judgment on his part likely to p*ss off a ton of Post readers. But why the heck do you and others on here keep trying to claim that the tweet in question was just a “dad joke”? Dad jokes are supposed to be goofy and sweet, they are called “dad jokes” in part because they are suitable for children of all ages. This was nothing of the sort. I’m asking the question sincerely because I find it so odd.

For reference, here are some dad jokes (https://parade.com/940979/kelseypelzer/best-dad-jokes/):
Why was the ghost so tired? He worked the graveyard shift.
What does a house wear? Address.
Why did the scarecrow win an award? He was out standing in his field.

Notice how none of them are hateful or putting down a group of people? Compare:
“Every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.”

Why would anyone think it’s fine or remotely funny to “joke” that all women are either mentally ill or gay? It’s really stupid for a journalist to retweet that, but why would anyone?

+1

The dad joke poster is really, really awful and is making Weigel look even worse.

Because it's probably Weigel. Hi Weigel, you're a despicable misogynist and you should have been fired. Others have been fired for less.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

It can be simultaneously true that she is awful (which indeed seems to be the case) and the Post is a very sexist institution whose reporting on anything involving women can’t be trusted, and that looks the other way at misogynist reporters.

I agree. And perhaps if the Post had done their duty, and fired that horrible man, then the woman wouldn't have had to insist, and she wouldn't have been fired!!!!!


Makes me mad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sonmez, who in 2021 sued the paper for discrimination (the suit was recently dismissed; she plans to appeal), has been outspoken over the past week about issues related to inequity in the newsroom.

In her public comments Sonmez had been highly critical of The Post's leadership, including Executive Editor Sally Buzbee, along with many of her colleagues.

At times, some of her colleagues went on Twitter to plead with Sonmez to stop attacking The Post on social media.

Jose A. Del Real, a reporter at The Post, responded on Twitter Saturday to Sonmez's initial tweet. Del Real said Weigel's tweet was "terrible and unacceptable."

"But," he added, "rallying the internet to attack him for a mistake he made doesn't actually solve anything. We all mess up in some way or another. There is such a thing as challenging with compassion."

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/06/09/media/felicia-sonmez-washington-post/index.html


She sounds awful.

It can be simultaneously true that she is awful (which indeed seems to be the case) and the Post is a very sexist institution whose reporting on anything involving women can’t be trusted, and that looks the other way at misogynist reporters.

Examples of sexist reporting (or lack thereof)?