The Post said Friday it would not comment on staffing issues. However, a copy of a letter of complaint sent Thursday denouncing her for “disobedience, harassment of colleagues on the Internet and breach of Post standards for collegiality and inclusion in the workplace” was posted on the Mediaite website and referred to other news accounts. The honest political writer, whose second term in the Post began in 2018, declined to comment on Friday. The incident began when Sonmez uploaded a screenshot of an offensive joke that a colleague, Dave Weigel, had posted on Twitter, adding the comment: “Fantastic to work for a news agency where retweets like this are allowed.” The Post suspended Weigel for a month for his retweet, according to reports. This prompted another reporter, Jose Del Real, to criticize Sonmez online. While saying that Weigel was wrong, Del Real asked for compassion. “Gathering the internet to attack him for a mistake he made does not solve anything,” he wrote. This led to a controversial back-and-forth, with Sonmez accusing Del Real of attacking her. As an online discussion expanded and attracted more people, Post executive editor Sally Buzbee sent out two memos urging staff to show respect for each other. The second, on Tuesday, was tougher: Buzbee wrote that “we do not tolerate colleagues attacking colleagues either face to face or online. As it attracted more attention, few Post employees tweeted their support for the newspaper as a good place to work. Sonmez noted that these people were among the highest paid stars in the newspaper and said that there are long-standing double standards and measures in the way social media policy is applied to them. She also posted a screenshot saying Del Real had blocked her on Twitter, adding: “This is how I hear the Washington Post is a collective workplace.” While eating, another Post reporter, Lisa Rein, tweeted to Sonmez: “Please stop.” Sonmez, who worked at the Post in the early 2010s, left and came back, suing the Post and its top editors last year, accusing her of discrimination for refusing to cover sexually explicit stories after she had previously been reported as a victim. attack. In the letter of complaint, signed by Human Resources Officer Wayne Connell, the Post stated that by questioning the motives of colleagues, Sonmez was undermining the Post’s reputation for journalistic integrity and justice. “The same goes for your baseless mockery of our policies and practices and our commitment to a safe and supportive work environment,” he wrote. Sonmez’s union, the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, said it was committed to ensuring that employees were disciplined only for a fair purpose, but that it did not comment on individual staff issues. One Post columnist Karen Attiah wrote on Twitter on Friday that Sonmez was “always incredibly polite and supportive” of her and that he had contacted her when Attiah became the target of cyberbullying.
