A private arbitrator has ordered The Washington Post to rehire award-winning opinion columnist Karen Attiah with back pay. Attiah was fired last fall over comments she made following the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Shortly after Kirk was killed last September, Attiah wrote online, “Part of what keeps America so violent is the insistence that people perform care, empty goodness and absolution for white men who espouse hatred and violence.”

“The Washington Post argued that my posts disparaged white men and were in violation of their social media policy,” says Attiah, who attributes her ability to challenge her firing to her union, the Washington Post Guild. “I am very much ready and willing to go back to writing,” she says. “My beat was writing about race, gender, human rights and global issues. So, I fully expect — and, frankly, demand — that I be able to publish freely, that I be able to write freely. So that is what is on the table.”

NERMEEN SHAIKH: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Nermeen Shaikh.

A private arbitrator has ordered The Washington Post to rehire opinion columnist Karen Attiah with back pay. Attiah was fired last fall over comments she made following the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Attiah is an award-winning journalist who served as the founding editor of the _Post_’s Global Opinions section. In 2019, she was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists. She was recognized for her writings about Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was assassinated by a team of Saudi agents inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2018. Attiah had recruited Khashoggi to be a columnist for the Post.

But Attiah’s career at The Washington Post came to an abrupt end last year. Shortly after Charlie Kirk was fatally shot, Attiah wrote online, quote, “For everyone saying political violence has no place in this country… Remember two Democratic legislators were shot in Minnesota just this year. And America shrugged and moved on.” In a follow-up post, she wrote, quote, “Part of what keeps America so violent is the insistence that people perform care, empty goodness and absolution for white men who espouse hatred and violence,” she wrote.

During her arbitration hearing, Attiah said, quote, “My commentary in general was about how America responds to acts of political violence, and quite often that response is different depending on the identity of the perpetrators of that violence.”

Karen Attiah joins us now from Washington, D.C.

Karen, welcome back to Democracy Now! If you could respond to The Washington Post’s decision to rehire you following this lengthy arbitration process?

KAREN ATTIAH: Yes. It’s good to be back. Thank you for having me on.

What can I say? I feel extremely vindicated. I feel quite tired, quite joyful. I’m sitting here, and I’m wearing red in honor of the Washington Post Guild. I’m a proud union member. And my ability to even challenge my firing, to file a grievance, and then to go to arbitration was all thanks to the fact that the Washington Post Guild and the Washington-Baltimore News Guild had in their contract for binding arbitration. So, as much as this is a victory for me, this is a victory for guilds, for unions, and as well as, you know, I’m feeling very much like this is beyond just a job, beyond just me, beyond just The Washington Post. This is a victory for journalism, for anyone who wants to stand up for just speaking the truth, for — I was just doing my job. So, I really do see this as a symbol that it’s worth it to stand up and fight for freedom of expression, for journalistic freedom. And when you fight, sometimes you win. And sometimes you win big, like in my case.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Karen, could you tell us: Have people from the Post been in touch with you since this was announced, and, in particular, the _Post_’s former opinions editor, Adam O’Neal?

KAREN ATTIAH: I have heard nothing from Adam O’Neal. The only time I’ve heard from him was once last year in a meeting, and then, secondly, during the arbitration, where he testified against me. My lawyers and reps at the moment are going back and forth with the Post, as I understand. But for me, I have still not heard anything yet from The Washington Post.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And explain, Karen, why exactly, what the justification was that was given for The Washington Post’s decision to sack you from your post. They cited, among other things, security threats, but not security threats against you.

KAREN ATTIAH: Right. So, two things. I mean, The Washington Post argued that my posts disparaged white men and were in violation of their social media policy. Of course, anyone reading with any reasonable amount of reading and grammar comprehension could see that I was talking about white men who choose to engage in hatred and violence. So there was that.

And then the Post tried to make the argument that because the Charlie Kirk killing was such an overly emotional time, that they had no choice but to distance themselves from me. And I think this is actually a really, really important point of the arbitrator’s decision. She reminded the Post of their own policies to protect their journalists, especially in times of heightened social media abuse and attacks.

I can say from my experience, frankly, the posts that I made did not engender that much backlash. I was not aware of any threats. And instead of The Washington Post calling me, telling me about the posts, they didn’t even tell me to take them down. Instead, they threw me to the wolves and basically blamed me for any supposed threat. The Washington Post basically manufactured a crisis of their own making in terms of the — in terms of posts and used that as a reason to get rid of me.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And could you place this, Karen, in the context of broader attacks on the media under the Trump administration, and also about what’s going on internally and has been going on at The Washington Post?

KAREN ATTIAH: So, my firing at the time, of course, people familiar with The Washington Post trajectory, particularly over the last couple of years, this came after Jeff Bezos said that the opinions section was only going to cover personal liberties and free markets, and nothing else. So, there was already a chilling effect and a sense of censorship. There were buyouts that were offered to the entire opinions section, of which I refused. I decided I wanted to stay. And part of the reason why I wanted to stay was because I was the last full-time staff Black opinion columnist in the section, and for a city that has historically been majority Black, I guess I just felt a sense that I needed to stay and do as much of the work as I could.

And in terms of the broader, broader picture, there’s been an attack on the media. We’ve seen how, specifically in the Charlie Kirk case, how JD Vance, members of the right wing were explicitly telling people to go after any critics of Charlie Kirk, and explicitly telling them to go after their jobs. Of course, we saw what happened to Jimmy Kimmel. All of this is coming in an environment where more and more media are facing pressure to kowtow to Trump, to kowtow to MAGA. And so, for me, again, I think this is why my reinstatement and this win means so much for so many people, because they see this as a proxy for standing up to this wave of censorship and oppression and targeting, particularly of Black voices and removing Black voices deemed as DEI from the public sphere.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And could you talk about — in your recent Substack piece, you mentioned Marc Thiessen, the Post columnist who encouraged Charlie Kirk critics to be doxxed and said on social media, using an expletive, “F— the media and liberal democrats.” But he still has his job at the Post.

KAREN ATTIAH: Right. Well, it all goes back to how, ironically, the _Post_’s treatment of me versus my white male colleagues just goes to the point of how men who encourage harm, or at least support it or appear to platform it, are coddled, are given a pat on the back and allowed to keep going, whereas myself, a woman journalist, a Black woman journalist, I get the harshest of punishments, and not just the harshest of punishments, but I myself am labeled a threat. So, for the Post saying that my posts went against journalistic integrity, perhaps they were more afraid that I actually clocked the behavior of America and The Washington Post when it comes to white men who choose to engage in violence. I was just calling a thing a thing, and The Washington Post, once again, in their treatment of me versus my white male colleagues, proved me right.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And before we conclude, Karen, so, what is your plan now? Do you plan to return to the Post? And many people are curious: What will happen with your Substack?

KAREN ATTIAH: So, the way I feel, I mean, right now I’m just savoring this victory as much as I can. I am very much ready and willing to go back to writing. My beat was writing about race, gender, human rights and global issues. So, I fully expect — and, frankly, demand — that I be able to publish freely, that I be able to write freely. So that is what is on the table. They have their marching orders. I’m still waiting to hear from the Post.

And as far as my Substack right now, my Substack, I’m going to keep writing, until I find out more about what’s going to happen with The Washington Post. But as of now, all my options are still on the table. So, for now, I’m — like I said, I’m savoring the victory, and I’m hoping to at least pop champagne in the near future.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: OK, congratulations again, Karen. Karen Attiah is former global opinion editor for The Washington Post. We’ll link to your latest Substack piece, “The Washington Post Fired Me. I Fought — and Won My Job Back.”

Nermeen Shaikh is a co-host and senior producer at the independent television news hour Democracy Now! based in New York City. She is the author of The Present as History: Critical Perspectives on Global Power (2007).