Ms Sonmez was fired via email on Thursday afternoon, according to one man. In a letter of resignation from the New York Times, Ms. Sonmez was informed that The Post was terminating her employment, with immediate effect, “for misconduct involving disobedience, bullying and harassment of your colleagues on the Internet.” of The Post’s standards on collectivity and coherence in the workplace “. The email, from Wayne Connell, the Post’s chief human resources officer, also reported that “Mrs. Sonmez’s public efforts to challenge the motives of your reporters” undermined The Post’s reputation. “We can not allow you to continue working as a journalist representing the Washington Post,” the letter said. Ms. Sonmez’s internal Slack account was deactivated Thursday afternoon, according to a screenshot viewed by the Times. In a telephone interview, Ms. Sonmez said there would be a statement from The Washington Post Newspaper Guild. The union said in a statement that it would not comment on individual staff issues. “We represent and support all members who face discipline,” he said. Ms Sonmez, a national political reporter, sued the newspaper and several top editors last year, saying she had discriminated against her by preventing her from covering up sexual assault stories after publicly identifying herself as a victim of assault. The case was dismissed in March and Ms. Sonmez’s lawyer then said she planned to appeal. Last week, it was at the center of a public storm over the culture of the pension room. On Friday, Dave Weigel, a political reporter for the newspaper, posted a sexist joke on Twitter suggesting that women were either bisexual or bipolar. Then Mrs. Sonmez wrote on Twitter: “Fantastic to work in a news agency where retweets like this are allowed!” Mr Weigel apologized for the tweet. On Monday, he was suspended from The Post for a month without pay, according to a person familiar with the matter. Ms Sonmez then disagreed on Twitter with Jose A. Del Real, a journalist who acknowledged Mr Weigel’s tweet was “unacceptable” but warned Ms Sonmez that he had “gathered the internet to attack” Mr Sonmez. Weigel. Mr Real later sent several tweets about a “relentless series of attacks” against him, and Ms Sonmez wondered why The Post had done nothing to scold him for his tweets about her, including one saying he had been involved in “Repeated and targeted public harassment of a colleague”. UPDATED June 9, 2022, 6:05 p.m. ET In the following days, Ms. Sonmez wrote several Twitter posts about the newsroom culture at The Post and what she said was the unequal way in which her social media policy was implemented by different reporters. From time to time she made points with fellow journalists at The Post on Twitter. Many in the editorial room supported Ms. Sonmez throughout her treatment and were grateful to her for defending the victims of sexual abuse, according to two Post staffers, but the feeling began to change this week as she continued to tweet about the Post. Some felt that Ms. Sonmez was attacking the foundation and disagreed with using public forums to criticize her colleagues, people said. Others disagreed with her response to an email from national editor Matea Gold urging people to take care of their mental health in the wake of last month’s shootings in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas. Ms Sonmez sent a reply to the editorial office saying she had once been punished after telling an editor she had to take a walk after reading a difficult story. Ms Sonmez defended herself in another tweet on Thursday morning, before being fired, saying: “I care a lot about my colleagues and I want this foundation to provide support to all employees. “Right now, the Post is a place where many of us are afraid that our trauma will be used against us, based on the company’s previous actions.” The fracas is the equivalent of a leadership test for Sally Buzbee, who became the executive editor of The Post last June. Ms Buzbee wrote two memos in the editorial office last week urging colleagues not to attack each other on social media. “The newsroom’s social media policy specifically highlights the need for collectivity,” Buzbee wrote in an email on Tuesday. Benjamin Mullin contributed to the report.
