The Washington Post Fires Its Last Black Opinion Columnist For Directly Quoting A Bigot
The Washington Post isn't what it used to be. While the paper is still peppered with a few decent journalists trying to do good work, the outlet is being slowly strangled to death by billionaire owner Jeff Bezos, who is steadily dismantling the last vestiges of the paper's sagging credibility in a desperate bid to mislead the public and pay homage to our mad, idiot king.
This week the paper fired its last black opinion columnist for directly quoting Charlie Kirk, a man paid by right wing billionaires to create short-form video internet propaganda where he tricks dull children into believing that minorities are inferior human beings.
Karen Attiah, WAPO's founding Global Opinions editor, took to Bluesky to say that WAPO management fired her for gross misconduct." Her offense? Standing up for her own civil rights in the age of U.S. authoritarianism:
Some personal news: I've been fired from the Washington Post in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting. Thread incoming. substack.com/@karenattiah...
- Karen Attiah (@karenattiah.bsky.social) 2025-09-15T11:07:10.888Z
Attiah explains what happened here. Her offense, according to a letter sent by Post leadership obtained by Oliver Darcy, was unacceptable Bluesky posts" that criticized white men," including this one that simply quoted Kirk's own words:
The Washington Post has always had a backward and ignorant policy that tries to prevent its employees from expressing human opinions. But its worth noting that this dated relic has never applied to opinion columnists specifically hired to express their opinions. That's before you even get to the fact that I should be allowed to exist without being threatened by hateful bigots" isn't an opinion.
It's clear Attiah, who hired murdered columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2017 and was central in shaping the former WAPO's opinion pages, was fired for the modern cardinal sin of upsetting thin-skinned Republicans and rich white authoritarian-earlobe-nibbling billionaires.
Attiah's firing comes amidst a backdrop of free speech loving" MAGA authoritarians desperately trying to cancel anybody who didn't engage in a distorted hagiography of Kirk and his work (which was, again, helping rich people spread hateful and divisive internet propaganda among children to divide the electorate and normalize ignorance and racism, all under the flimsy cover of Christian values").
Like so many U.S. billionaire-owned major media outlets, the Post has responded to authoritarianism with the ethical equivalent of a wet farting sound. It's painfully demonstrated the failures of consolidated corporate media, where ownership interest in tax breaks, deregulation, and rubber-stamped merger approvals trumps any interest in objective truth or educating America's increasingly befuddled electorate.
The extraction class wants the public fighting amongst themselves about issues like race and candy gender; they certainly don't want an informed electorate supporting things like making billionaires pay their fucking taxes. So all of our billionaire media owners (also see: the LA Times) are desperately trying to reshape reality and blunt the public backlash to their abhorrent, self-serving behaviors.
So under the leadership of former Rupert Murdoch lackey William Lewis, the Post has increasingly become a safe space for authoritarian zealots. That's included not just journalism that's softer on far right-wing ideology, but firing cartoonists who criticize Jeff Bezos. It has also involved retooling its opinion pages so everyone is super nice to corporations, billionaires, and authoritarian assholes.
The collapse of major U.S. media institutions and repurposing of many of them as propaganda (see: CBS) very closely follows the authoritarian playbook in countries like Hungary. A functional press, healthy education system, and an informed electorate is an existential threat to rich right-wing zealots with terrible, unpopular ideas, who want to strip the country for parts in peace.
But however rich Jeff Bezos may be, the market for billionaire ass kissing and authoritarian earlobe nibbling is minimal and already extremely saturated. The paper has not only been suffering a brain drain of decent journalists and columnists, it's been heavily bleeding subscribers since election season. And the more Bezos tries to reshape reality and informed consensus, the bigger the backlash seems to get.
The death of mainstream corporate journalism at the hands of weird rich assholes does, one would hope, open the door to more independent journalism, worker-owned journalism outfits, and direct-to-consumer newsletters (though it's ironic Attiah's article on her firing is being hosted at Substack, a company run by people who openly courted white supremacists to goose engagement).
If it's not yet clear, there's a violent information war going on. And the folks who care about things like foundational ethics, informed consensus, and the public good are losing. Badly. Not giving our money, time, or attention to companies and billionaires keen on crushing democratic norms and basic human rights seems like the very least we can do.