WaPo Grudgingly Reinstates Sonmez

I agree with the decision to finally end the indefensible suspension of Felicia Sonmez, and to paraphrase Byron White my agreement ends there:

The Washington Post on Tuesday reinstated a reporter who it had placed on administrative leave after she tweeted a story referencing 2003 rape allegations against Kobe Bryant only a few hours after the former basketball superstar and his daughter died in a helicopter crash.

The action was taken against Felicia Sonmez, who covers politics for The Post, on Sunday after her tweet referencing a 2016 article about the charges against Bryant sparked an angry backlash against her, including death threats.

But after a brief investigation into the matter, The Post’s newsroom managers decided that no further action against Sonmez was warranted and that they had been out of line in publicly announcing disciplinary action against her.

“After conducting an internal review, we have determined that, while we consider Felicia’s tweets ill-timed, she was not in clear and direct violation of our social media policy,” Managing Editor Tracy Grant said in a statement. “Reporters on social media represent The Washington Post, and our policy states ‘we must be ever mindful of preserving the reputation of The Washington Post for journalistic excellence, fairness and independence.’ We consistently urge restraint, which is particularly important when there are tragic deaths. We regret having spoken publicly about a personnel matter.”

It is not at all surprising that Sonmez didn’t violate any of the paper’s social media policies; if she had, there would have been specific reasons for her suspension given in the first place. The obvious fact is that Sonmez did nothing wrong, and any social media policy that made anything she did a suspendable offense would be silly and incapable of being enforced fairly. The idea that public figures are entitled to some kind of arbitrary period of uncritical hagiography is anti-journalistic nonsense, and the obituary published by the Post that day makes clear that it’s not the policy of the paper. The alternate theory cooked up by some apologists that the suspension was Actually about Troll Privacy Ethics appears not to be true, but even if it had it wouldn’t actually have been a better reason. The Post doesn’t have a policy that trolls who send abusive or threatening emails are entitled to total anonymity, which is logical since such a policy would be extremely dumb. The Post owes Sonmez an apology both for suspending her without cause and for refusing to back her up against people threatening her.

Meanwhile, you have to admire Sonmez for not backing down at all:

Sonmez issued a tough statement in response to the lifting of her suspension: “I believe that Washington Post readers and employees, including myself, deserve to hear directly from Marty Baron on the newspaper’s handling of this matter.”

I think that’s yer mic drop right there.