Washington Post Fires Ghanaian-American Journalist Karen Attiah Over Comments on Charlie Kirk

Ghanaian-American columnist Karen Attiah, a longtime Washington Post contributor and Pulitzer Prize finalist, has been dismissed from the newspaper’s Opinions department following her social media posts criticizing political violence after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

In a Substack post on Monday, September 15, Attiah explained that her termination was linked to “speaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns.” Her comments, shared on the Bluesky platform, came in response to Kirk’s fatal shooting during a September 10 event at Utah Valley University.

The Washington Post Guild condemned the move, stating: “The Washington Post wrongly fired Opinions columnist Karen Attiah over her social media posts. The Post not only flagrantly disregarded standard disciplinary processes, it also undermined its own mandate to be a champion of free speech.”

According to CNN, Post management objected to Attiah’s claim that Kirk “espoused violence,” as well as her reference to a 2023 remark in which Kirk questioned the “brain processing power” of prominent Black women, including Joy Reid and Michelle Obama.

Attiah, the Post’s last remaining full-time Black opinion columnist, rejected the paper’s allegations of “unacceptable” behavior and “gross misconduct,” dismissing them as “charges without evidence.”

Her firing comes amid growing upheaval in the Opinions department, following owner Jeff Bezos’ February 2025 directive to realign the newspaper’s editorial focus toward “personal liberties and free markets.”

Attiah first gained recognition at the Post after the 2018 murder of her colleague Jamal Khashoggi. She later became the founding editor of the Global Opinions section and transitioned into a columnist role in 2021.