Reply to Washington Post fires reporter Felicia Somnez who objected to misogynistic tweets

Forum Index » Off-Topic

Reply to "Washington Post fires reporter Felicia Somnez who objected to misogynistic tweets"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=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.

[quote]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.
[/quote][/quote]

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

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics