Felicia Sonmez, Washington Post’s political reporter, was fired on June 9 amid allegations of misconduct. She received a termination letter stating that her demeanour included “insubordination, maligning her co-workers online and violating The Post’s standards on workplace collegiality and inclusivity.”

According to The Washington Post’s website, Sonmez graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in Government in 2005, and began her career teaching English in Beijing. The 39-year-old reported is based on Washington, D.C., and also knows advanced Chinese which she studied at Tsinghua University.

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Washington Post also declared that they could not allow her to work as a journalist representing them due to their objective is to “ensure equal treatment and protection for all employees” and “fight to create an inclusive workspace”.

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Sonmez’s behaviour was alleged to be initiated by an incident where she called out fellow political reporter Dave Weigel for a tweet revealing his sexism and homophobia, along with the news establishment itself for its complicity.

She had previously sued Washington Post along with top editors, claiming that they had prohibited her from covering stories related to sexual assault after she had declared that she was a victim of such a crime. The judge dismissed her case stating that the restriction was related to bias caused by her public statements.

Sonmez had also previously had conflicts with another colleague  Jose A. Del Real, who asserted that while Weigel’s tweet was “unacceptable”, he did not appreciate Sonmez “rallying the internet to attack him”. However, she had also enquired why the firm had remained silent regarding Real’s public statements about her, including tweets where Real referred to  “unrelenting series of attacks” against him. 

Sonmez later publicly acknowledged the differential treatment of reporters at The Post and continued to defend herself. Her final tweets before she was laid off stated that the news company had turned into a place where several reporters “feared that their trauma would be used against them”