Washington Post Suspended Top Media Reporter Paul Farhi For Tweeting News About Paper

MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

A complaint filed in U.S. District Court on Friday revealed that the Washington Post briefly suspended veteran media reporter Paul Farhi for tweeting about an internal byline policy back in March.

The complaint filed by the Washington Baltimore News Guild alleged that the Post did not go to arbitration with Farhi regarding the suspension as they say was required by the guild’s contract with the paper.

The tweet leading to Farhi’s suspension read:

Some internal news: In response to Putin’s threats against reporters in Russia, the @washingtonpost will remove bylines and datelines from stories produced by our journalists in Russia. Goal is to ensure staff’s safety.

Been around a while. Never seen anything like this.

Following the tweet, according to the Washington Baltimore News Guild’s complaint, managing editors Krissah Thompson and Tracy Grant suspended Farhi for five days. They alleged that Farhi’s tweet “jeopardized the safety of a colleague as well as the ability of The Washington Post to report in a foreign country.”

The Guild, however, said Farhi was “accurately reporting internal Post news in the course of his duties as a media reporter.”

The Washingtonian, which first reported on the Guild’s complaint, noted that Farhi “regularly reports on his own workplace. He broke the news in 2013 that Jeff Bezos would buy the paper and often tweets about internal news.”

The Washingtonian received a copy of the letter suspending Farhi, which said he must “demonstrate impeccable professional judgment and specifically to never act in a way that jeopardizes the safety of your colleagues or makes it harder for them to do the work of The Post.”

The letter also threatened Farhi with “increased disciplinary action, up to and including the termination of your employment” were he to repeat the behavior.

The Post Guild, which also noted in its complaint that the Washington Post did not go to arbitration with reporter Felicia Sonmez upon firing her, said in a statement:

All Washington Post employees have a right to contest disciplinary action by filing a grievance and presenting their case before an arbitrator. This is one of the essential protections guaranteed by our Guild contract. We’re deeply disappointed by the Post’s unwillingness to respect that right or engage fairly with the Guild on disciplinary issues, here and at the bargaining table.

The Washington Post has been the center of multiple scandals lately regarding reporters speaking out against the office culture at the paper, including Sonmez, who was fired after calling out a colleague for a sexist joke on Twitter and subsequently publicly criticizing the Post’s social media policies.

The Washington Post declined to comment for this story.

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