Who Is Felicia Sonmez? Washington Post Fires Its Political Correspondent

The Washington Post has fired outspoken political writer Felicia Sonmez, who has been waging a Twitter war against her coworkers and the news organisation for the past week.

Sonmez kicked off the feud by tweeting her displeasure with an offensive joke shared by a male reporter. He apologised and pulled down the joke, but the Washinton Post punished him for a month without pay, as per reports.

Who Is Felicia Sonmez?

Sonmez worked for Agence France-Presse and The Wall Street Journal as a foreign correspondent in Beijing. In 2010, she began working as a political correspondent for The Washington Post. In January 2020, while working as a national political writer for the Post, Sonmez was allegedly placed on administrative leave for tweeting about Kobe Bryant's sexual assault charge shortly after his death. She claims to not break the Post's social media policy.

Sonmez made headlines again in July 2021 when she filed a lawsuit against The Washington Post, alleging that the newspaper had discriminated against her by refusing to allow her to cover sexual assault after she came forward as a survivor. The case was thrown out, as per reports. 

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Earlier on June 8, she wrote in her tweet, “I’ve seen some folks voice anger that I’ve been doing Twitter searches of my name. One of the things you do, after you’ve been doxxed in the past, is constantly keeping an eye on what people are saying about you—to make certain the attacks don’t escalate into a fresh round of doxxing.”

Editor-in-chief of @thebizofbiz, Christie Smythe replied, “Don’t listen to people complaining about name searches. They do that out of a misplaced belief that they can somehow comment “privately” about you to their followers in a public space. They do not understand how Twitter actually works.” This was followed by New York Times bestselling author, Lauren Hough’s reply, “Yeah. I just don’t think the average Twitter user can even comprehend how dark it gets or the absolute fucking psychos a pile-on will stir up until they’ve been on the other side of one. I’m so f****** sorry you’re STILL dealing with this shit.”

Feature Image Credit: The Times.