The trial is over and the verdict is in: Felicia Sonmez has been found not guilty of committing Twitter crimes. The Washington Post, which had suspended Sonmez, a national politics reporter, for tweeting about Kobe Bryant’s 2003 rape case, officially reinstated her on Tuesday.

A quick recap of this very messy saga. On Sunday, shortly after Kobe Bryant was killed in a tragic helicopter crash, Sonmez tweeted a link to a deeply reported 2016 Daily Beast article about the rape accusation faced by the NBA star. She didn’t provide any commentary; it was just a link.

There was an immediate backlash, and Sonmez was deluged with angry messages. Her address was leaked and she had to leave her house because she was worried about her safety.

Instead of protecting its reporter, the Post’s management sided with the online mob. On Sunday, Sonmez received an email containing a screenshot of her tweet from Marty Baron, the Post’s executive editor. “A real lack of judgment to tweet this,” he wrote. “Please stop. You’re hurting this institution by doing this.” This was followed by an official statement from the Post denouncing her tweets and her being placed on administrative leave.

The Post’s editorial union rallied to Sonmez’s defence. On Monday, more than 300 of the paper’s journalists signed a letter expressing “alarm and dismay” that their colleague had been suspended over a social media post.

On Tuesday, management decided to let its badly behaved female reporter to come down off the naughty step.

The managing editor, Tracy Grant, said in a statement: “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.”

Ill-timed? What sort of timing, one wonders, would have been OK? When, exactly, would it have been acceptable, or not, for Sonmez to acknowledge the rape allegation against Bryant? Is it the Post’s policy that one must wait exactly 14 business days after a celebrity’s death before acknowledging that the person may be leaving a complicated legacy?

On Tuesday, Sonmez responded to Grant’s statement with one of her own, noting that Washington Post readers and employees “deserve to hear directly” from Baron about the newspaper’s handling of the matter.

I believe that Washington Post readers and employees, including myself, deserve to hear directly from @PostBaron on the newspaper’s handling of this matter. My statement on The Post’s decision tonight: pic.twitter.com/t5ULzUQhYT — Felicia Sonmez (@feliciasonmez) January 29, 2020

Sonmez is absolutely right. This episode isn’t just about one woman’s tweets; it’s about the Post’s priorities and the worldview of its management. It’s about what you get punished for saying, and what is let go as a “controversial” opinion. It’s about a world where the Washington Post seems to find Sonmez’s tweets more egregious than that time its blogger Jennifer Rubin retweeted links to a blogpost calling Palestinians “savages” and “food for sharks”.

The Post’s op-ed editor at the time vociferously defended Rubin, saying she has “strong views” (Baron wasn’t the editor then.) So, take note, aspiring journalists: you can be as anti-Arab as you like – that’s just “strong views” – but God forbid you acknowledge a rape case against a dead celebrity.

Now. It’s fine to debate the etiquette of Sonmez’s tweet. However, censoring a woman for tweeting about sexual assault sends a chilling message. It is a reminder that the legacies of great men are always considered more important than the women they may have hurt along the way. It is a reminder, as Sonmez herself tweeted, of the “pressure people come under to stay silent in these cases”.

Sonmez’s treatment by the Post is particularly disturbing, considering she has previously been disciplined by the paper for tweeting about her own sexual assault.

“This is not the first time the Post has sought to control how Felicia speaks on matters of sexual violence,” Monday’s statement by the Post’s union notes. “Felicia herself is a survivor of assault, who bravely came forward with her story two years ago. When articles attacking her were published in other outlets, the Post did not release a statement in support of one of its respected political reporters. Instead, management issued a warning letter against Felicia for violating the Post’s vague and inconsistently enforced social media guidelines.”

The Post ostensibly suspended Sonmez because it was worried she was undermining the integrity of the paper. But if anything undermines the Post’s credibility and the work of its journalists, it is the disastrous way it managed this situation. Democracy dies in darkness? Democracy dies on Twitter, more like.