WaPo Editor: I Got Fired Over Charlie Kirk

Did the Washington Post fire a long-time editor for speaking truth to power? Or did she lose her job because she couldn’t do basic research before smearing the victim of a political assassination? Or worse?

YMMV, but the way Karen Attiah frames the argument in her newly launched Substack certainly looks sus, as the kids say these days. It takes her an awfully long time to get to the catalyst for her termination …. and for good reason, as it turns out:

Some news: I’ve been fired from the Washington Post.

But my work will continue anyway.https://t.co/bGcYOsQvlI pic.twitter.com/3btymavsQi

— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) September 15, 2025

What “work” would that be? Well, it turns out to be the work of slagging Charlie Kirk in the immediate aftermath of his murder. To be fair, a number of journalists also believe that to be their “work.” One can perhaps understand her confusion on this point. 

The final straw appears to have come on Bluesky, where Attiah’s attacks on Kirk got published. She used quotation marks to alter his words and take a point out of specific context as a means to cast Kirk as an all-out bigot and misogynist:

My journalistic and moral values for balance compelled me to condemn violence and murder without engaging in excessive, false mourning for a man who routinely attacked Black women as a group, put academics in danger by putting them on watch lists, claimed falsely that Black people were better off in the era of Jim Crow, said that the Civil Rights Act was a mistake, and favorably reviewed a book that called liberals “Unhumans”. In a since-deleted post, a user accused me of supporting violence and fascism. I made clear that not performing over-the-top grief for white men who espouse violence was not the same as endorsing violence against them.

My only direct reference to Kirk was one post— his own words on record.

My commentary received thoughtful engagement across platforms, support, and virtually no public backlash.

And yet, the Post accused my measured Bluesky posts of being “unacceptable”, “gross misconduct” and of endangering the physical safety of colleagues — charges without evidence, which I reject completely as false. They rushed to fire me without even a conversation. This was not only a hasty overreach, but a violation of the very standards of journalistic fairness and rigor the Post claims to uphold.

Except those actually aren’t Charlie’s “words on record.” Attiah sources this from an article rushed out by The Guardian less than 24 hours after Kirk’s death that attempted to argue sotto voce that Kirk had it coming. Even if one grants the Guardian the presumption that they took his words in context, Attiah changed the quote the Guardian provided at the link she used as a reference. This is the quote that the Guardian allegedly pulled from Kirk’s show in July 2023:

If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us … You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.

Note that the quote doesn’t include the phrase “black women” at all. Kirk referenced four specific black women in this criticism, arguing that their own words made them look like affirmative-action charity cases. The “you” in this case refers to the four women he named. Attiah rewrote this quote to make it sound as though Kirk was talking about all black women. 

That is journalistic fraud. And that is likely why the Post just handed Attiah her walking papers. She lied to readers, and did so to imply that Charlie Kirk had it coming. She used quotation marks to sell her fraud, knowing damned well that quotation marks mean something to readers, and that falsely representing a quote in that manner is corrupt.

By the way, this is Charlie’s actual argument from that show. Agree with it or not, it’s clear he’s talking about four specific women, primarily Joy Reid and Sheila Jackson Lee, not black women as a whole:

Charlie Kirk said Joy Reid, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Shiela Jackson Lee, and Michelle Obama used affirmative action because they “do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously” so they had to “steal a white person’s slot.” pic.twitter.com/W6DgzF4r2l

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) July 14, 2023

Attiah is getting slagged over this on Twitter, and rightfully so:

Charlie never said this, but @KarenAttiah still, even now, says that these were “his words on record”

They are not. A journalist who cannot research a source quote should be fired. This is an enduring lie among the left at this point. pic.twitter.com/NPBC6NlVwm

— PoIiMath (@politicalmath) September 15, 2025

Attiah actually did research the quote — and still decided to alter it anyway. This isn’t a case of incompetence, but of malicious and deliberately false reporting. Attiah did this to spread hatred and defend political violence. 

Small wonder that Attiah now finds herself out of a job. This isn’t suppressing speech; it’s called the consequences of your actions. Frankly, I’m impressed that the Post actually took the trash out to the journalistic curb in such a short time span. 

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