(CNN) — The Washington Put up on Thursday fired Felicia Sonmez, the reporter who has been terribly crucial of her colleagues and the newspaper’s management during the last a number of days, two folks acquainted with the matter instructed CNN.
The Put up’s termination discover, a duplicate of which was seen by CNN, stated Sonmez was fired for “misconduct that features insubordination, maligning your coworkers on-line and violating The Put up’s requirements on office collegiality and inclusivity.”
“We can't help you proceed to work as a journalist representing The Washington Put up,” the letter concluded.
Reached by telephone, Sonmez declined to remark. The Washington Put up additionally declined to remark. The Washington Put up Guild, which represents newsroom staff, stated it doesn't remark “on particular person personnel points.”
The Every day Beast was first to report Sonmez’s exit.
Sonmez has been on the middle of an intra-Put up battle that began final Friday when reporter David Weigel retweeted a sexist joke. He deleted the tweet, however not earlier than Sonmez captured a display shot and confronted him publicly each on Twitter and on the corporate’s inside Slack communication.
By Monday, the Put up had suspended Weigel for one month with out pay and admonished him in each private and non-private statements.
The fallout has thrown the paper’s newsroom into disarray.
Sonmez, 39, who covers nationwide politics, has been outspoken over the previous week about points associated to inequity within the newsroom, together with public feedback extremely crucial of Govt Editor Sally Buzbee and different Put up leaders.
A few of her colleagues went on Twitter to plead with Sonmez to cease attacking the Put up on social media.
Jose A. Del Actual, a reporter on the Put up, responded on Twitter Saturday to Sonmez’s preliminary tweet. Del Actual stated Weigel’s tweet was “horrible and unacceptable.” “However,” he added, “rallying the web to assault him for a mistake he made doesn’t really resolve something. All of us mess up in a roundabout way or one other. There's such a factor as difficult with compassion.”
Sonmez responded that “calling out sexism isn’t ‘cruelty,'” however one thing that's “completely needed.”
Buzbee tried twice to quell the general public infighting by means of statements, together with a stern memo to staff on Tuesday. In that memo, Buzbee, “within the strongest of phrases,” outlined guidelines that each one staffers are anticipated to comply with.
“We don't tolerate colleagues attacking colleagues both nose to nose or on-line,” Buzbee wrote. “Respect for others is crucial to any civil society, together with our newsroom.”
Simply hours after Buzbee issued her memo, Sonmez tweeted a display seize displaying she was nonetheless blocked on Twitter by Del Actual. And she or he retweeted one other person mocking a few of her colleagues who had joined collectively to ship tweets expressing pleasure about working on the Put up.
Reporter Lisa Rein tweeted at Sonmez that night time, writing, “Please cease.”
Sonmez replied and requested, “Do you've got any concept of the torrent of abuse I’m dealing with proper now?”
In her Thursday thread, Sonmez argued that the colleagues who publicly defended the Put up this week are White and among the many most extremely paid newsroom staff.
“It's a nice office *for them*,” she wrote.
Sonmez’s previous disputes together with her employers embrace a lawsuit she filed final yr after she was quickly banned from protecting tales involving sexual harassment or misconduct as a result of she had publicly recognized herself as a sexual assault sufferer. The swimsuit was just lately dismissed; she plans to attraction.
She was additionally suspended in 2020 for tweets crucial of Kobe Bryant instantly after his loss of life. The managing editor on the time stated Sonmez’s feedback “displayed poor judgment that undermined the work of her colleagues.”
Sonmez’s bio, which remained on the Put up’s web site Friday, says she graduated from Harvard in 2005 with a bachelor’s diploma in authorities, then spent 4 years in Beijing, instructing English and dealing as a journalist for Agence France-Press and the Wall Avenue Journal’s China Actual Time Report. She had been on the Put up since 2010.
The-CNN-Wire
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