Jake Tapper Confronts Ex-WaPo Editor For Suspending Reporter Over Kobe Bryant Tweet: It ‘Was Journalism’

CNN’s Jake Tapper confronted Marty Baron, the former executive editor of The Washington Post, over a chapter in his new book that explained why he suspended a reporter for tweeting about Kobe Bryant.

“In your book, you describe being livid over her tweet,” Tapper said. “First of all, I can’t think of anything more journalistic in the sense that we are the ones that are supposed to bring up the most uncomfortable truths to the public than that tweet.”

Basketball star Bryant and eight other people, including his daughter Gigi, were killed in a 2020 helicopter crash. An hour after TMZ reported the deaths, Post reporter Felicia Sonmez tweeted a link to an article about rape allegations made against Bryant in 2003. The case never went to trial, although Bryant did apologize and settled with the victim.

“What Felicia did was journalism,” Tapper said. “And second of all, I bet there were millions of rape survivors and sexual assault survivors that saw her tweet, and thought, ‘Thank God somebody out there is speaking for me.'”

Baron said WaPo management didn’t “feel she should have been involved in that story. The people who should have been were the people we assigned to be involved in the story, and it distracted attention from the coverage that we were undertaking.”

Baron said it was management policy to decide how to cover sensitive issues before putting out information.

“That’s what we wanted to do in the case of Kobe Bryant. Let’s assign the right reporters to work on it. Let’s have editors involved in those discussions and in the formation of that coverage, and those are the people who should focus on it, not just anybody on the staff,” he said.

Sonmez was put on administrative leave following the tweet, which started a dialogue about social media use in newsrooms. Sonmez was fired two years later for “insubordination” and “maligning colleagues.”

Watch the clip above via CNN.