Sonmez, who worked at the Post in the early 2010s, left and rejoined, sued the Post and its top editors last year, charging discrimination in barring her from covering stories related to sexual assault after she had previously gone public as an assault victim herself. She also retweeted a screen shot that said Del Real had blocked her on Twitter, adding the comment, “So I hear the Washington Post is a collegial workplace.” While it was consuming attention, another Post reporter, Lisa Rein, tweeted to Sonmez: “please stop.” Sonmez noted that those people were among the newspaper’s best-paid stars, and suggested there has been a longstanding double standard in how social media policy is applied to them.

The second, on Tuesday, was more stern: Buzbee wrote that “we do not tolerate colleagues attacking colleagues either face to face or online.”Īs it consumed more attention, a handful of Post employees tweeted their support of the newspaper as a good place to work.

That led to a contentious back-and-forth, with Sonmez accusing Del Real of attacking her.Īs an online debate widened and drew in more people, the Post’s executive editor, Sally Buzbee, sent out two memos calling on staff members to show respect for each other. “Rallying the Internet to attack him for a mistake he made doesn’t actually solve anything,” he wrote. While saying Weigel had been wrong, Del Real called for compassion. That prompted another reporter, Jose Del Real, to criticize Sonmez online. The incident began when Sonmez tweeted a screen shot of an offensive joke that a colleague, Dave Weigel, had sent out on Twitter, adding the comment: “Fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed.” The Post suspended Weigel for a month for his retweet, according to published reports.

Consumed by Felicia Fox