Washington Post fires reporter Felicia Somnez who objected to misogynistic tweets

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did Felicia find this thread? Throughout these 20+ pages of discussion there is a constant repetition of wrong information - perhaps the same person posting again and again. Whoever keeps insisting that she was fired for calling out a sexist tweet is determined to misrepresent the facts.

They’re also reporting random posts super quickly, as if they (read she) is literally refreshing the thread all day. Totally normal behavior. Yikes.

Something you would only notice if you’re on this thread all day. Go back to work Dave Wiegel. You still have a job at the WaPo

[Anonymous]

From the New York Times--if the Washington Post did in fact bar her from reporting on sexual assault because she's a victim of sexual assault, that's pretty egregious.

Ms. Sonmez, a national political reporter, sued the paper and several top editors last year, saying they had discriminated against her by barring her from covering stories about sexual assault after she had publicly identified herself as a victim of assault. The case was dismissed in March, with the judge noting that The Post had attributed the coverage bans not to her being a victim of sexual assault but to concerns that her public statements had created an appearance of bias. Ms. Sonmez’s lawyer at the time said she planned to appeal.

In the past week, she has been at the center of a public firestorm over the newsroom’s culture. On Friday, Dave Weigel, a political reporter at the paper, retweeted a sexist joke that implied women were either bisexual or bipolar. Ms. Sonmez then tweeted, “Fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!”

Mr. Weigel apologized for the tweet. On Monday, he was suspended by The Post for a month without pay, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Ms. Sonmez then got into a Twitter disagreement with Jose A. Del Real, a reporter who acknowledged Mr. Weigel’s tweet was “unacceptable” but admonished Ms. Sonmez for “rallying the internet to attack” Mr. Weigel. Mr. Del Real later sent several tweets regarding an “unrelenting series of attacks” against him, and Ms. Sonmez questioned why The Post had not done anything to reprimand him for his tweets about her, including one that said she had engaged in “repeated and targeted public harassment of a colleague.

In the following days, Ms. Sonmez wrote numerous posts on Twitter about the newsroom culture at The Post and what she said was the uneven way its social media policy was applied to different reporters. At times she jousted with fellow journalists at The Post on Twitter.

Many in the newsroom supported Ms. Sonmez throughout her lawsuit and were grateful to her for her advocacy for sexual abuse victims, according to two current Post employees, but the sentiment began to shift this week as she continued to tweet about The Post.

[Anonymous]

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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.

The only post employee who attacked a colleague was Del Real. He attacked Somnez and she retweeted his attacks. Most of her tweets were retweeting language by the post. Del Real was not punished, Weigel suspended, and she was fired for speaking out. Stay silent ladies!

I don’t work at the Post but the optics of what they did looks terrible. Old boys club indeed.

Oh, get real. It was Somnez who was flipping out. I read the chain in the Post. The more she posted the more hysterical and vitriolic she got. She was a loose cannon. They're better off without her.

So much gender bias in the way some posters are talking about Somnez. “Hysterical” “flipping out”, “loose cannon.” None of these things seem to be apples to the man who started this whole incident by tweeting that all women are either bisexual or bipolar. Let’s call him some names too-not just the woman brave enough to call him out for being a woman hater.

Except he didn't display any hysterical behavior, and she did.

Funny how only women are ever called "hysterical". I don't think calling out Dave Wiegel for saying that women are either bipolar or bisexual is "hysterical." I do think Dave Wiegel is somewhat sociopathic.

Dude, it was a joke. A re-tweet. May have even been an accidental re-tweet. Relax and move on. Raging about this makes you sound unstable.

A female reporter called out a sexist joke and got fired. Not funny to me. (Also, you're trying to call many many posters unstable, and the fact that you think you're having a dialogue with one person just makes you sound dim.)

We’re 20 pages into this and you still don’t even know why she was fired.

She wasn’t fired for simply calling him out. She was fired because she went overboard, disrespected her colleagues, and wouldn’t stop when asked by her management.

Apples and oranges comparison.

+2 This is so frustrating.

Dave Wiegel publicly disrespected all women. He has a job.
She complained that he publicly disrespected all women. The Washington post fired her.

She was fired because she was acting like a raging lunatic with her continued tweets complaining about her colleagues. She was apparently counseled many times to cease and desist, yet she did not. She was fired because she wouldn't stop throwing her temper tantrum. Get over it.

That’s your opinion Dave Wiegel, not a fact. Learn the difference

The letter from her employer is posted earlier.

[Anonymous]

The Post has a history of treating this woman badly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/opinion/sonmez-kobe-washington-post.html

The culture war will come for us all.

On Sunday, it came for a Washington Post reporter, Felicia Sonmez.

Nine people were killed in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, Calif., that morning, including the basketball legend Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna. The news rocketed around social media, where mourners shared their heartbreak at the news. As is common with major breaking news, some reports were inaccurate or false, layering anxiety on top of grief.

Into the mix, Ms. Sonmez tweeted the link to a 2016 article from The Daily Beast about a young woman’s accusation that Mr. Bryant had raped her in Colorado. Criminal charges against him were dropped in 2004 and a civil suit was settled out of court.


The tweet highlighted the fact that Mr. Bryant’s legacy is fraught and complicated, and attracted the attention of fans as well as trolls who bombarded her inbox with abuse and posted her home address online. Ms. Sonmez then posted a selection of the threats she received, without obscuring the names of the people who had sent her hate mail. She slept in a hotel on Sunday night, fearing for her safety at home, she said.

We don’t know all the details, but it seems that The Post’s managing and executive editors were not pleased. They chastised her over email and placed her on administrative leave while the organization reviewed whether she had violated the company’s social media guidelines. Their reasoning on Monday: “The tweets displayed poor judgment that undermined the work of her colleagues.” The Post reversed her suspension on Tuesday, roughly 36 hours after the initial tweets, stating that senior managers had concluded that Ms. Sonmez’s tweets didn’t violate company policy.

This, of course, was obvious to almost everyone but The Post’s higher-ups. It was impossible to imagine how posting a link to a story by a different publication on Twitter could undermine the work of colleagues. Just as it was impossible to imagine which colleagues would have felt undermined (more than 300 of Ms. Sonmez’s colleagues expressed solidarity with her in a letter from The Post’s union to management).

There remain glaring questions. Did the executive editor, Marty Baron, inquire about Ms. Sonmez’s safety when he emailed her to criticize her tweets? What, beyond a reflex for online civility, led The Post to determine the reporter was “hurting this institution” by discussing a part of Mr. Bryant’s legacy that appeared in The Post’s own news pages? Why, after years of watching journalists, women and vulnerable individuals being trolled and abused by viral outrage online, are newsrooms still falling for the same Gamergate-style tactics? The Post’s official statement (it doesn’t quite rise to the level of an apology), which included the caveat “we consistently urge restraint” for reporters online, doesn’t begin to answer these questions.

Mr. Baron released a memo to Post staff on Thursday admitting “It is not always easy to know where to draw the line” on many of these issues. Notably, the memo did not include an apology.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Post has a history of treating this woman badly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/opinion/sonmez-kobe-washington-post.html

The culture war will come for us all.

On Sunday, it came for a Washington Post reporter, Felicia Sonmez.

Nine people were killed in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, Calif., that morning, including the basketball legend Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna. The news rocketed around social media, where mourners shared their heartbreak at the news. As is common with major breaking news, some reports were inaccurate or false, layering anxiety on top of grief.

Into the mix, Ms. Sonmez tweeted the link to a 2016 article from The Daily Beast about a young woman’s accusation that Mr. Bryant had raped her in Colorado. Criminal charges against him were dropped in 2004 and a civil suit was settled out of court.


The tweet highlighted the fact that Mr. Bryant’s legacy is fraught and complicated, and attracted the attention of fans as well as trolls who bombarded her inbox with abuse and posted her home address online. Ms. Sonmez then posted a selection of the threats she received, without obscuring the names of the people who had sent her hate mail. She slept in a hotel on Sunday night, fearing for her safety at home, she said.

We don’t know all the details, but it seems that The Post’s managing and executive editors were not pleased. They chastised her over email and placed her on administrative leave while the organization reviewed whether she had violated the company’s social media guidelines. Their reasoning on Monday: “The tweets displayed poor judgment that undermined the work of her colleagues.” The Post reversed her suspension on Tuesday, roughly 36 hours after the initial tweets, stating that senior managers had concluded that Ms. Sonmez’s tweets didn’t violate company policy.

This, of course, was obvious to almost everyone but The Post’s higher-ups. It was impossible to imagine how posting a link to a story by a different publication on Twitter could undermine the work of colleagues. Just as it was impossible to imagine which colleagues would have felt undermined (more than 300 of Ms. Sonmez’s colleagues expressed solidarity with her in a letter from The Post’s union to management).

There remain glaring questions. Did the executive editor, Marty Baron, inquire about Ms. Sonmez’s safety when he emailed her to criticize her tweets? What, beyond a reflex for online civility, led The Post to determine the reporter was “hurting this institution” by discussing a part of Mr. Bryant’s legacy that appeared in The Post’s own news pages? Why, after years of watching journalists, women and vulnerable individuals being trolled and abused by viral outrage online, are newsrooms still falling for the same Gamergate-style tactics? The Post’s official statement (it doesn’t quite rise to the level of an apology), which included the caveat “we consistently urge restraint” for reporters online, doesn’t begin to answer these questions.

Mr. Baron released a memo to Post staff on Thursday admitting “It is not always easy to know where to draw the line” on many of these issues. Notably, the memo did not include an apology.

Personally, as someone who has been attacked on social media by reporters who cover the issue that I research, I'm glad that the Post tries to avoid having reporters who have strongly formed personal views on various issue cover those same issues for the Post. I recognize that no one is truly objective, but if you are on the record with strong feelings on a particular issue (pro or con) and if you are interacting with random readers in highly opinionated ways, you should not be tasked with news coverage of those same issues. Sorry Felicia (and the NYT reporter who covers the issue that I know best, whom I've called out on Twitter for harassing those who disagree with her.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Post has a history of treating this woman badly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/opinion/sonmez-kobe-washington-post.html

The culture war will come for us all.

On Sunday, it came for a Washington Post reporter, Felicia Sonmez.

Nine people were killed in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, Calif., that morning, including the basketball legend Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna. The news rocketed around social media, where mourners shared their heartbreak at the news. As is common with major breaking news, some reports were inaccurate or false, layering anxiety on top of grief.

Into the mix, Ms. Sonmez tweeted the link to a 2016 article from The Daily Beast about a young woman’s accusation that Mr. Bryant had raped her in Colorado. Criminal charges against him were dropped in 2004 and a civil suit was settled out of court.


The tweet highlighted the fact that Mr. Bryant’s legacy is fraught and complicated, and attracted the attention of fans as well as trolls who bombarded her inbox with abuse and posted her home address online. Ms. Sonmez then posted a selection of the threats she received, without obscuring the names of the people who had sent her hate mail. She slept in a hotel on Sunday night, fearing for her safety at home, she said.

We don’t know all the details, but it seems that The Post’s managing and executive editors were not pleased. They chastised her over email and placed her on administrative leave while the organization reviewed whether she had violated the company’s social media guidelines. Their reasoning on Monday: “The tweets displayed poor judgment that undermined the work of her colleagues.” The Post reversed her suspension on Tuesday, roughly 36 hours after the initial tweets, stating that senior managers had concluded that Ms. Sonmez’s tweets didn’t violate company policy.

This, of course, was obvious to almost everyone but The Post’s higher-ups. It was impossible to imagine how posting a link to a story by a different publication on Twitter could undermine the work of colleagues. Just as it was impossible to imagine which colleagues would have felt undermined (more than 300 of Ms. Sonmez’s colleagues expressed solidarity with her in a letter from The Post’s union to management).

There remain glaring questions. Did the executive editor, Marty Baron, inquire about Ms. Sonmez’s safety when he emailed her to criticize her tweets? What, beyond a reflex for online civility, led The Post to determine the reporter was “hurting this institution” by discussing a part of Mr. Bryant’s legacy that appeared in The Post’s own news pages? Why, after years of watching journalists, women and vulnerable individuals being trolled and abused by viral outrage online, are newsrooms still falling for the same Gamergate-style tactics? The Post’s official statement (it doesn’t quite rise to the level of an apology), which included the caveat “we consistently urge restraint” for reporters online, doesn’t begin to answer these questions.

Mr. Baron released a memo to Post staff on Thursday admitting “It is not always easy to know where to draw the line” on many of these issues. Notably, the memo did not include an apology.

Personally, as someone who has been attacked on social media by reporters who cover the issue that I research, I'm glad that the Post tries to avoid having reporters who have strongly formed personal views on various issue cover those same issues for the Post. I recognize that no one is truly objective, but if you are on the record with strong feelings on a particular issue (pro or con) and if you are interacting with random readers in highly opinionated ways, you should not be tasked with news coverage of those same issues. Sorry Felicia (and the NYT reporter who covers the issue that I know best, whom I've called out on Twitter for harassing those who disagree with her.)

By that logic, Dave Wiegel shouldn't be reporting on women.

[Anonymous]

Felicia Sonmez’s Firing Highlights the Limits of Progress For Women In Newsrooms
The Washington Post sent a message: Be nice when a man displays a bit of sexism. Or be quiet.
https://niemanreports.org/articles/felicia-sonmez-washington-post-sexism/

Felicia Sonmez demanded that The Washington Post live up to the highest standard — zero tolerance for sexism. She wouldn’t allow the organization to tiptoe around an issue our industry has tiptoed around for far too long. That’s why she’s no longer a reporter there. Or at least, that’s how it looks from afar.

In fairness, it’s exceedingly difficult to get the full story on a personnel issue. Privacy concerns make it difficult for an employer to be fully transparent. The Post told those who reached out last week it wouldn’t comment. I reached out to Sonmez but haven’t heard back.

According to a leaked termination letter, Sonmez was fired for, among other things, “maligning your coworkers online and violating the Post’s standards on workplace collegiality and inclusivity.” That came after several days after an internal dispute spilled out onto Twitter when another reporter, David Weigel, retweeted a sexist joke, and Sonmez called him out for it. The termination letter also cited Sonmez’s “insubordination.” Sonmez kept tweeting about newsroom culture after executive editor Sally Buzbee sent an email trying to squash the public back-and-forth.

But insubordination is a tool of necessity, used by every trailblazing journalist or activist working to change an unjust system. Sonmez was an activist trying to improve an industry long saddled by sexism. Her sin was trying to raise the bar on how sexism is treated inside newsrooms and covered by the media.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From the New York Times--if the Washington Post did in fact bar her from reporting on sexual assault because she's a victim of sexual assault, that's pretty egregious.

Ms. Sonmez, a national political reporter, sued the paper and several top editors last year, saying they had discriminated against her by barring her from covering stories about sexual assault after she had publicly identified herself as a victim of assault. The case was dismissed in March, with the judge noting that The Post had attributed the coverage bans not to her being a victim of sexual assault but to concerns that her public statements had created an appearance of bias. Ms. Sonmez’s lawyer at the time said she planned to appeal.

In the past week, she has been at the center of a public firestorm over the newsroom’s culture. On Friday, Dave Weigel, a political reporter at the paper, retweeted a sexist joke that implied women were either bisexual or bipolar. Ms. Sonmez then tweeted, “Fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!”

Mr. Weigel apologized for the tweet. On Monday, he was suspended by The Post for a month without pay, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Ms. Sonmez then got into a Twitter disagreement with Jose A. Del Real, a reporter who acknowledged Mr. Weigel’s tweet was “unacceptable” but admonished Ms. Sonmez for “rallying the internet to attack” Mr. Weigel. Mr. Del Real later sent several tweets regarding an “unrelenting series of attacks” against him, and Ms. Sonmez questioned why The Post had not done anything to reprimand him for his tweets about her, including one that said she had engaged in “repeated and targeted public harassment of a colleague.

In the following days, Ms. Sonmez wrote numerous posts on Twitter about the newsroom culture at The Post and what she said was the uneven way its social media policy was applied to different reporters. At times she jousted with fellow journalists at The Post on Twitter.

Many in the newsroom supported Ms. Sonmez throughout her lawsuit and were grateful to her for her advocacy for sexual abuse victims, according to two current Post employees, but the sentiment began to shift this week as she continued to tweet about The Post.

They did not bar her because she was a victim of sexual assault, any more than they fired her for objecting to a tweet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Felicia Sonmez’s Firing Highlights the Limits of Progress For Women In Newsrooms
The Washington Post sent a message: Be nice when a man displays a bit of sexism. Or be quiet.
https://niemanreports.org/articles/felicia-sonmez-washington-post-sexism/

Felicia Sonmez demanded that The Washington Post live up to the highest standard — zero tolerance for sexism. She wouldn’t allow the organization to tiptoe around an issue our industry has tiptoed around for far too long. That’s why she’s no longer a reporter there. Or at least, that’s how it looks from afar.

In fairness, it’s exceedingly difficult to get the full story on a personnel issue. Privacy concerns make it difficult for an employer to be fully transparent. The Post told those who reached out last week it wouldn’t comment. I reached out to Sonmez but haven’t heard back.

According to a leaked termination letter, Sonmez was fired for, among other things, “maligning your coworkers online and violating the Post’s standards on workplace collegiality and inclusivity.” That came after several days after an internal dispute spilled out onto Twitter when another reporter, David Weigel, retweeted a sexist joke, and Sonmez called him out for it. The termination letter also cited Sonmez’s “insubordination.” Sonmez kept tweeting about newsroom culture after executive editor Sally Buzbee sent an email trying to squash the public back-and-forth.

But insubordination is a tool of necessity, used by every trailblazing journalist or activist working to change an unjust system. Sonmez was an activist trying to improve an industry long saddled by sexism. Her sin was trying to raise the bar on how sexism is treated inside newsrooms and covered by the media.

Ah, it all makes sense now. She’s an activist who was trying—not very successfully—to pass herself off as a journalist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Post has a history of treating this woman badly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/opinion/sonmez-kobe-washington-post.html

The culture war will come for us all.

On Sunday, it came for a Washington Post reporter, Felicia Sonmez.

Nine people were killed in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, Calif., that morning, including the basketball legend Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna. The news rocketed around social media, where mourners shared their heartbreak at the news. As is common with major breaking news, some reports were inaccurate or false, layering anxiety on top of grief.

Into the mix, Ms. Sonmez tweeted the link to a 2016 article from The Daily Beast about a young woman’s accusation that Mr. Bryant had raped her in Colorado. Criminal charges against him were dropped in 2004 and a civil suit was settled out of court.


The tweet highlighted the fact that Mr. Bryant’s legacy is fraught and complicated, and attracted the attention of fans as well as trolls who bombarded her inbox with abuse and posted her home address online. Ms. Sonmez then posted a selection of the threats she received, without obscuring the names of the people who had sent her hate mail. She slept in a hotel on Sunday night, fearing for her safety at home, she said.

We don’t know all the details, but it seems that The Post’s managing and executive editors were not pleased. They chastised her over email and placed her on administrative leave while the organization reviewed whether she had violated the company’s social media guidelines. Their reasoning on Monday: “The tweets displayed poor judgment that undermined the work of her colleagues.” The Post reversed her suspension on Tuesday, roughly 36 hours after the initial tweets, stating that senior managers had concluded that Ms. Sonmez’s tweets didn’t violate company policy.

This, of course, was obvious to almost everyone but The Post’s higher-ups. It was impossible to imagine how posting a link to a story by a different publication on Twitter could undermine the work of colleagues. Just as it was impossible to imagine which colleagues would have felt undermined (more than 300 of Ms. Sonmez’s colleagues expressed solidarity with her in a letter from The Post’s union to management).

There remain glaring questions. Did the executive editor, Marty Baron, inquire about Ms. Sonmez’s safety when he emailed her to criticize her tweets? What, beyond a reflex for online civility, led The Post to determine the reporter was “hurting this institution” by discussing a part of Mr. Bryant’s legacy that appeared in The Post’s own news pages? Why, after years of watching journalists, women and vulnerable individuals being trolled and abused by viral outrage online, are newsrooms still falling for the same Gamergate-style tactics? The Post’s official statement (it doesn’t quite rise to the level of an apology), which included the caveat “we consistently urge restraint” for reporters online, doesn’t begin to answer these questions.

Mr. Baron released a memo to Post staff on Thursday admitting “It is not always easy to know where to draw the line” on many of these issues. Notably, the memo did not include an apology.

Personally, as someone who has been attacked on social media by reporters who cover the issue that I research, I'm glad that the Post tries to avoid having reporters who have strongly formed personal views on various issue cover those same issues for the Post. I recognize that no one is truly objective, but if you are on the record with strong feelings on a particular issue (pro or con) and if you are interacting with random readers in highly opinionated ways, you should not be tasked with news coverage of those same issues. Sorry Felicia (and the NYT reporter who covers the issue that I know best, whom I've called out on Twitter for harassing those who disagree with her.)

Exactly. Reporters need to be objective. I’m not sure when Millenial journalists got this idea that journalism is activism. If that’s what you want to do with your writing, you need to join a different kind of organization, not a major news outlet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Post has a history of treating this woman badly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/opinion/sonmez-kobe-washington-post.html

The culture war will come for us all.

On Sunday, it came for a Washington Post reporter, Felicia Sonmez.

Nine people were killed in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, Calif., that morning, including the basketball legend Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna. The news rocketed around social media, where mourners shared their heartbreak at the news. As is common with major breaking news, some reports were inaccurate or false, layering anxiety on top of grief.

Into the mix, Ms. Sonmez tweeted the link to a 2016 article from The Daily Beast about a young woman’s accusation that Mr. Bryant had raped her in Colorado. Criminal charges against him were dropped in 2004 and a civil suit was settled out of court.


The tweet highlighted the fact that Mr. Bryant’s legacy is fraught and complicated, and attracted the attention of fans as well as trolls who bombarded her inbox with abuse and posted her home address online. Ms. Sonmez then posted a selection of the threats she received, without obscuring the names of the people who had sent her hate mail. She slept in a hotel on Sunday night, fearing for her safety at home, she said.

We don’t know all the details, but it seems that The Post’s managing and executive editors were not pleased. They chastised her over email and placed her on administrative leave while the organization reviewed whether she had violated the company’s social media guidelines. Their reasoning on Monday: “The tweets displayed poor judgment that undermined the work of her colleagues.” The Post reversed her suspension on Tuesday, roughly 36 hours after the initial tweets, stating that senior managers had concluded that Ms. Sonmez’s tweets didn’t violate company policy.

This, of course, was obvious to almost everyone but The Post’s higher-ups. It was impossible to imagine how posting a link to a story by a different publication on Twitter could undermine the work of colleagues. Just as it was impossible to imagine which colleagues would have felt undermined (more than 300 of Ms. Sonmez’s colleagues expressed solidarity with her in a letter from The Post’s union to management).

There remain glaring questions. Did the executive editor, Marty Baron, inquire about Ms. Sonmez’s safety when he emailed her to criticize her tweets? What, beyond a reflex for online civility, led The Post to determine the reporter was “hurting this institution” by discussing a part of Mr. Bryant’s legacy that appeared in The Post’s own news pages? Why, after years of watching journalists, women and vulnerable individuals being trolled and abused by viral outrage online, are newsrooms still falling for the same Gamergate-style tactics? The Post’s official statement (it doesn’t quite rise to the level of an apology), which included the caveat “we consistently urge restraint” for reporters online, doesn’t begin to answer these questions.

Mr. Baron released a memo to Post staff on Thursday admitting “It is not always easy to know where to draw the line” on many of these issues. Notably, the memo did not include an apology.

Personally, as someone who has been attacked on social media by reporters who cover the issue that I research, I'm glad that the Post tries to avoid having reporters who have strongly formed personal views on various issue cover those same issues for the Post. I recognize that no one is truly objective, but if you are on the record with strong feelings on a particular issue (pro or con) and if you are interacting with random readers in highly opinionated ways, you should not be tasked with news coverage of those same issues. Sorry Felicia (and the NYT reporter who covers the issue that I know best, whom I've called out on Twitter for harassing those who disagree with her.)

By that logic, Dave Wiegel shouldn't be reporting on women.

Does he cover the “women” beat?

The joke was terrible and would have pissed me off. But he’s a political reporter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From the New York Times--if the Washington Post did in fact bar her from reporting on sexual assault because she's a victim of sexual assault, that's pretty egregious.

Ms. Sonmez, a national political reporter, sued the paper and several top editors last year, saying they had discriminated against her by barring her from covering stories about sexual assault after she had publicly identified herself as a victim of assault. The case was dismissed in March, with the judge noting that The Post had attributed the coverage bans not to her being a victim of sexual assault but to concerns that her public statements had created an appearance of bias. Ms. Sonmez’s lawyer at the time said she planned to appeal.

In the past week, she has been at the center of a public firestorm over the newsroom’s culture. On Friday, Dave Weigel, a political reporter at the paper, retweeted a sexist joke that implied women were either bisexual or bipolar. Ms. Sonmez then tweeted, “Fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!”

Mr. Weigel apologized for the tweet. On Monday, he was suspended by The Post for a month without pay, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Ms. Sonmez then got into a Twitter disagreement with Jose A. Del Real, a reporter who acknowledged Mr. Weigel’s tweet was “unacceptable” but admonished Ms. Sonmez for “rallying the internet to attack” Mr. Weigel. Mr. Del Real later sent several tweets regarding an “unrelenting series of attacks” against him, and Ms. Sonmez questioned why The Post had not done anything to reprimand him for his tweets about her, including one that said she had engaged in “repeated and targeted public harassment of a colleague.

In the following days, Ms. Sonmez wrote numerous posts on Twitter about the newsroom culture at The Post and what she said was the uneven way its social media policy was applied to different reporters. At times she jousted with fellow journalists at The Post on Twitter.

Many in the newsroom supported Ms. Sonmez throughout her lawsuit and were grateful to her for her advocacy for sexual abuse victims, according to two current Post employees, but the sentiment began to shift this week as she continued to tweet about The Post.

This is what she sued them about and the lawsuit was dismissed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Post has a history of treating this woman badly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/opinion/sonmez-kobe-washington-post.html

The culture war will come for us all.

On Sunday, it came for a Washington Post reporter, Felicia Sonmez.

Nine people were killed in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, Calif., that morning, including the basketball legend Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna. The news rocketed around social media, where mourners shared their heartbreak at the news. As is common with major breaking news, some reports were inaccurate or false, layering anxiety on top of grief.

Into the mix, Ms. Sonmez tweeted the link to a 2016 article from The Daily Beast about a young woman’s accusation that Mr. Bryant had raped her in Colorado. Criminal charges against him were dropped in 2004 and a civil suit was settled out of court.


The tweet highlighted the fact that Mr. Bryant’s legacy is fraught and complicated, and attracted the attention of fans as well as trolls who bombarded her inbox with abuse and posted her home address online. Ms. Sonmez then posted a selection of the threats she received, without obscuring the names of the people who had sent her hate mail. She slept in a hotel on Sunday night, fearing for her safety at home, she said.

We don’t know all the details, but it seems that The Post’s managing and executive editors were not pleased. They chastised her over email and placed her on administrative leave while the organization reviewed whether she had violated the company’s social media guidelines. Their reasoning on Monday: “The tweets displayed poor judgment that undermined the work of her colleagues.” The Post reversed her suspension on Tuesday, roughly 36 hours after the initial tweets, stating that senior managers had concluded that Ms. Sonmez’s tweets didn’t violate company policy.

This, of course, was obvious to almost everyone but The Post’s higher-ups. It was impossible to imagine how posting a link to a story by a different publication on Twitter could undermine the work of colleagues. Just as it was impossible to imagine which colleagues would have felt undermined (more than 300 of Ms. Sonmez’s colleagues expressed solidarity with her in a letter from The Post’s union to management).

There remain glaring questions. Did the executive editor, Marty Baron, inquire about Ms. Sonmez’s safety when he emailed her to criticize her tweets? What, beyond a reflex for online civility, led The Post to determine the reporter was “hurting this institution” by discussing a part of Mr. Bryant’s legacy that appeared in The Post’s own news pages? Why, after years of watching journalists, women and vulnerable individuals being trolled and abused by viral outrage online, are newsrooms still falling for the same Gamergate-style tactics? The Post’s official statement (it doesn’t quite rise to the level of an apology), which included the caveat “we consistently urge restraint” for reporters online, doesn’t begin to answer these questions.

Mr. Baron released a memo to Post staff on Thursday admitting “It is not always easy to know where to draw the line” on many of these issues. Notably, the memo did not include an apology.

Personally, as someone who has been attacked on social media by reporters who cover the issue that I research, I'm glad that the Post tries to avoid having reporters who have strongly formed personal views on various issue cover those same issues for the Post. I recognize that no one is truly objective, but if you are on the record with strong feelings on a particular issue (pro or con) and if you are interacting with random readers in highly opinionated ways, you should not be tasked with news coverage of those same issues. Sorry Felicia (and the NYT reporter who covers the issue that I know best, whom I've called out on Twitter for harassing those who disagree with her.)

By that logic, Dave Wiegel shouldn't be reporting on women.

Does he cover the “women” beat?

The joke was terrible and would have pissed me off. But he’s a political reporter.

Does politics not involve women? He focuses on "grassroots movements" according to this bio. No women there...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From the New York Times--if the Washington Post did in fact bar her from reporting on sexual assault because she's a victim of sexual assault, that's pretty egregious.

Ms. Sonmez, a national political reporter, sued the paper and several top editors last year, saying they had discriminated against her by barring her from covering stories about sexual assault after she had publicly identified herself as a victim of assault. The case was dismissed in March, with the judge noting that The Post had attributed the coverage bans not to her being a victim of sexual assault but to concerns that her public statements had created an appearance of bias. Ms. Sonmez’s lawyer at the time said she planned to appeal.

In the past week, she has been at the center of a public firestorm over the newsroom’s culture. On Friday, Dave Weigel, a political reporter at the paper, retweeted a sexist joke that implied women were either bisexual or bipolar. Ms. Sonmez then tweeted, “Fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!”

Mr. Weigel apologized for the tweet. On Monday, he was suspended by The Post for a month without pay, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Ms. Sonmez then got into a Twitter disagreement with Jose A. Del Real, a reporter who acknowledged Mr. Weigel’s tweet was “unacceptable” but admonished Ms. Sonmez for “rallying the internet to attack” Mr. Weigel. Mr. Del Real later sent several tweets regarding an “unrelenting series of attacks” against him, and Ms. Sonmez questioned why The Post had not done anything to reprimand him for his tweets about her, including one that said she had engaged in “repeated and targeted public harassment of a colleague.

In the following days, Ms. Sonmez wrote numerous posts on Twitter about the newsroom culture at The Post and what she said was the uneven way its social media policy was applied to different reporters. At times she jousted with fellow journalists at The Post on Twitter.

Many in the newsroom supported Ms. Sonmez throughout her lawsuit and were grateful to her for her advocacy for sexual abuse victims, according to two current Post employees, but the sentiment began to shift this week as she continued to tweet about The Post.

They did not bar her because she was a victim of sexual assault, any more than they fired her for objecting to a tweet.

Well you are clearly involved in the situation. I don't work at the Washington Post or know anyone who works there, but it seems a lot less clear from people who write the news articles about this situation (CNN, NYTimes, obviously the Washington Post didn't cover this).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Post has a history of treating this woman badly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/opinion/sonmez-kobe-washington-post.html

The culture war will come for us all.

On Sunday, it came for a Washington Post reporter, Felicia Sonmez.

Nine people were killed in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, Calif., that morning, including the basketball legend Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna. The news rocketed around social media, where mourners shared their heartbreak at the news. As is common with major breaking news, some reports were inaccurate or false, layering anxiety on top of grief.

Into the mix, Ms. Sonmez tweeted the link to a 2016 article from The Daily Beast about a young woman’s accusation that Mr. Bryant had raped her in Colorado. Criminal charges against him were dropped in 2004 and a civil suit was settled out of court.


The tweet highlighted the fact that Mr. Bryant’s legacy is fraught and complicated, and attracted the attention of fans as well as trolls who bombarded her inbox with abuse and posted her home address online. Ms. Sonmez then posted a selection of the threats she received, without obscuring the names of the people who had sent her hate mail. She slept in a hotel on Sunday night, fearing for her safety at home, she said.

We don’t know all the details, but it seems that The Post’s managing and executive editors were not pleased. They chastised her over email and placed her on administrative leave while the organization reviewed whether she had violated the company’s social media guidelines. Their reasoning on Monday: “The tweets displayed poor judgment that undermined the work of her colleagues.” The Post reversed her suspension on Tuesday, roughly 36 hours after the initial tweets, stating that senior managers had concluded that Ms. Sonmez’s tweets didn’t violate company policy.

This, of course, was obvious to almost everyone but The Post’s higher-ups. It was impossible to imagine how posting a link to a story by a different publication on Twitter could undermine the work of colleagues. Just as it was impossible to imagine which colleagues would have felt undermined (more than 300 of Ms. Sonmez’s colleagues expressed solidarity with her in a letter from The Post’s union to management).

There remain glaring questions. Did the executive editor, Marty Baron, inquire about Ms. Sonmez’s safety when he emailed her to criticize her tweets? What, beyond a reflex for online civility, led The Post to determine the reporter was “hurting this institution” by discussing a part of Mr. Bryant’s legacy that appeared in The Post’s own news pages? Why, after years of watching journalists, women and vulnerable individuals being trolled and abused by viral outrage online, are newsrooms still falling for the same Gamergate-style tactics? The Post’s official statement (it doesn’t quite rise to the level of an apology), which included the caveat “we consistently urge restraint” for reporters online, doesn’t begin to answer these questions.

Mr. Baron released a memo to Post staff on Thursday admitting “It is not always easy to know where to draw the line” on many of these issues. Notably, the memo did not include an apology.

Personally, as someone who has been attacked on social media by reporters who cover the issue that I research, I'm glad that the Post tries to avoid having reporters who have strongly formed personal views on various issue cover those same issues for the Post. I recognize that no one is truly objective, but if you are on the record with strong feelings on a particular issue (pro or con) and if you are interacting with random readers in highly opinionated ways, you should not be tasked with news coverage of those same issues. Sorry Felicia (and the NYT reporter who covers the issue that I know best, whom I've called out on Twitter for harassing those who disagree with her.)

I sort of agree, sort of disagree. In this case, I don't think the problem is that she was a victim of sexual assault (though when you read the account...) or that she is publicly against sexual assault (we all should be!). It's that her tweets and behavior showed her as someone who would report as an advocate, not as an impartial reporter. Calling Kobe a ra**st on twitter on the day he died sort of shows your hand.

Maybe she just shouldn't be in straight news, because she likes to share her opinions on things too much. She could be an opinion columnist, though. Then you get paid to have an opinion.