Following an internal revolt from hundreds of journalists, the Washington Post said on Tuesday afternoon that a reporter it suspended had not violated the company social media policy by tweeting an article about Kobe Bryant’s historical rape accusation hours after his death.

The Washington Post’s managing editor, Tracy Grant, also said the newspaper regretted speaking publicly about suspending Felicia Sonmez, a national politics reporter, for the tweets, which Post management had initially said “undermined the work of her colleagues”.

“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,” Grant said in an emailed statement.

Shortly after Bryant was killed in a helicopter crash with eight others, including his 13-year-old daughter, Sonmez shared on Twitter a 2016 Daily Beast article, which revisited the 2003 rape accusation against Bryant made by a 19-year-old receptionist at a Colorado hotel.

The teenager had told local police she had been raped in Bryant’s hotel room but ultimately declined to testify in a criminal case. Bryant has always insisted the encounter was consensual and said in an apology: “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.”

After sharing the story, Sonmez faced swift backlash online, including from the US president’s son Donald Trump Jr, who said: “You Washington Post reporters really can’t help yourselves, can you?”

More than 300 journalists at the Post, one of the country’s largest papers, signed a letter from its union expressing “alarm and dismay” at the newspaper’s decision to suspend Sonmez. The Washington Post Guild said Tuesday that Sonmez had been reinstated.

The Post’s opinion section also published an article by its own media critic slamming the move. “If journalists at the Post are prone to suspension for tweeting stories off their beats, the entire newsroom should be on administrative leave,” wrote the critic, Erik Wemple.

Sonmez told Wemple, the media critic, that someone had posted her home address online and that the newspaper’s managing editor, Grant, had told her in an email that the Post’s concerns with the tweets were that they didn’t “pertain” to the reporter’s “coverage area”. Grant told Sonmez: “Your behavior on social media is making it harder for others to do their work as Washington Post journalists,” according to Wemple.

In a letter to Grant, and the Post’s editor-in-chief, Marty Baron, the Washington Post Guild said Sonmez left her home out of fear for her safety because of threats she received in response to the tweet “and has gotten insufficient guidance from the Post on how to protect herself”.

The Guild said the Post previously issued a warning letter against Sonmez for violating its social media guidelines when she tweeted about being a survivor of sexual assault two years ago.

Not only did the Guild express concern with how the Post responds to survivors of sexual violence, it also critiqued the company’s “arbitrary and over-broad social media policy”.

Washington Post reporters further criticized the decision on Twitter.

Amber Phillips, a reporter at the Post, shared the Guild statement on Twitter and said she would not be posting on the social media website any more until the Post clarified its social media policy and brought Sonmez back.

After Felicia was unfairly suspended for sending a tweet that drew a strong reaction, I feel like any one of us reporters could be suspended at a moment's notice. I'm staying off Twitter until @washingtonpost gives us clarity, and brings Felicia back. https://t.co/9lfw19RAl3 — Amber Phillips (@byamberphillips) January 27, 2020

Wesley Lowery, who won a Pulitzer prize with the Washington Post and announced he is leaving the newspaper on Tuesday, tweeted Wemple’s article, saying he suspected by doing so the Post could argue he was violating its policy against criticizing colleagues.

The Post has a policy against criticizing colleagues, which I fear they'd argue I violated if I tweeted the headline to this @ErikWemple piece. (I've asked, haven't heard back). In the meantime, you should read it https://t.co/zq1scVzNKZ — Wesley (@WesleyLowery) January 27, 2020

In a since-deleted tweet, Sonmez justified her decision to share the article: “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.”