Felicia Sonmez says bosses suspended her because they felt her tweets about Bryant made it harder for Post reporters to do their jobs

Washington Post political reporter Felicia Sonmez has been suspended from her job after a series of tweets in the aftermath of the helicopter crash that killed basketball legend Kobe Bryant.

Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others perished Sunday morning in Calabasas, California.

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Tweeting Sunday afternoon, Sonmez posted a link to a Daily Beast article which explored a 2003 allegation of sexual assault against Bryant. The article, written in 2016, is headlined: “Kobe Bryant’s Disturbing Rape Case: The DNA Evidence, the Accuser’s Story, and the Half-Confession.”

Social media users, some of them high profile, quickly went on the attack against Sonmez and the Post, saying that her posts were insensitive to the player’s death. The allegation she referred to, made by a hotel worker in Colorado, was never heard in criminal court but Bryant publicly apologized to his accuser and settled a civil complaint.

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“Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did,” he said at the time.

Donald Trump Junior, a son of President Donald Trump who has frequently clashed with news reporters, was among those weighing in against Sonmez.

“You Washington Post reporters really can’t help yourselves, can you?” Trump tweeted. He linked to the tweet of the article from Sonmez, but very soon she had deleted it and others in which she had defended her actions. As the backlash came fast, Sonmez had initially posted to Twitter that she had received hate mail from “10,000 people” but said she was within her rights to have linked to the article.

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“To the 10,000 people (literally) who have commented and emailed me with abuse and death threats, please take a moment and read the story — which was written 3+ years ago, and not by me. Any public figure is worth remembering in their totality even if that public figure is beloved and that totality unsettling.

“That folks are responding with rage and threats toward me (someone who didn’t even write the piece but found it well-reported) speaks volumes about the pressure people come under to stay silent in these cases.”

She later tweeted:

“If your response to a news article is to resort to harassment and intimidation of journalists, you might want to consider that your behavior says more about you than the person you’re targeting.”

Soon, though, all of her tweets on the topic would be removed. They had, however, been saved by many social media users.

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In a statement to the Guardian and other outlets Monday , the Washington Post said that the tweets were in violation of the Post’s policies around social media, and Sonmez had been put on leave. Managing Editor Tracy Grant said:

“National political reporter Felicia Sonmez was placed on administrative leave while the Post reviews whether tweets about the death of Kobe Bryant violated the Post newsroom’s social media policy. The tweets displayed poor judgment that undermined the work of her colleagues.”

As well as the vitriol headed her way, Sonmez did have her defenders on social media, with some saying the Post had acted rashly in suspending her.

“Suspending a reporter for tweeting a relevant detail — a detail included in virtually ALL the obits I’ve read — is heavy handed and chilling,” tweeted reporter Barry Whyte. “I can’t speak to the Washington Post’s social media policies and I don’t know (Felicia Sonmez), but it’s hard to understand the decision.”

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Later reports indicated Sonmez had not actually been suspended for the initial tweets about Bryant, but rather for taking a screen shot of her email inbox and tweeting an image in which the names of people who had sent her abusive mail could readily be seen.

Journalist Matthew Keys said a source at the Post told him that the email screen shot was deemed more damaging than the actual Bryant tweets, because it gave away the names of emailers and could put the Post in legal jeopardy.

Business Insider reported that beyond its initial statement, the Post would not add further detail on exactly why Sonmez had been placed on leave. But Erik Wemple, the Post’s own media critic, came to Sonmez’s defence later on Monday, writing in an opinion piece on the Post’s site

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“What did Sonmez do to deserve this brushback? She tweeted out a very good story from the Daily Beast.”

Sonmez said in an interview with Wemple for the same piece that she had reluctantly removed the tweets on Bryant on the advice of her bosses at the Post. She said her higher-ups had told her that the tweets weren’t related to her normal subject area (politics) and made it harder for other Post reporters to do their jobs.

“I would argue that not ignoring a matter of public record is the way to go and making survivors feel seen and heard helps Washington Post journalists rather than making our jobs harder,” she told Wemple.

“We are more able to do our jobs because we’ve demonstrated to those survivors that we’re worthy of their trust. I’m a little confused. If The Post is arguing that letting those survivors feel seen makes other colleagues jobs harder, I’d appreciate an explanation.”

Wemple wrote that, “if journalists at The Post are prone to suspension for tweeting stories off their beats, the entire newsroom should be on administrative leave. Two, the contention that sharing a link to a news article complicates the work of others requires supporting evidence.”