Washington Post’s Felicia Sonmez Blasts Management for Barring Her From Covering Sexual Assault: ‘This Harms All of Us’ (UPDATED)

Leia IdlibyMar 29th, 2021, 11:33 am
 
Washington Post

Eric Baradat/Getty Images

Washington Post reporter Felicia Sonmez spoke out against leadership at her own publication on Sunday — condemning them for barring her from covering sexual assault.

Sonmez, who is herself a sexual assault survivor, spoke out against management at the Post, criticizing them for failing to support her and survivors of assault.

The breaking news reporter took to Twitter following a Politico report stating that during a March 16 town-hall style Zoom call, which was intended to offer support to Post reporter Seung Min Kim following racist attacks online, Sonmez wrote in the company-wide chat box: “I wish editors had publicly supported me in the same way.”

“Hours before the 3/16 Washington Post town hall that @politico reported on, I had a session with a therapist I hadn’t seen for more than a year (I had changed insurance). I caught him up on the events of the past year, including all the threats, my doxxing and suspension,” she wrote, adding, “At one point, he asked me whether I feel supported by the Post’s current management, now that the editor who oversaw my suspension had retired. And I just burst into tears.”

Sonmez had been suspended by now-former executive editor Marty Baron after she posted a tweet reminding her followers that Kobe Bryant had been accused of rape.

Although the suspension was lifted following an outpouring of support from other reporters and journalists, Sonmez was later banned from covering topics related to sexual misconduct or the #MeToo movement.

“I was stunned to see that the same editor who has silenced me from defending myself online, said nothing when I had to leave my home amid threats and continues to bar me from fully doing my job was being quoted as an authority on protecting female journalists,” she wrote in another tweet.

“This same editor was aware that his remarks at the 3/16 town hall had caused me deep distress, because my direct manager (@DonnaCassata, the lone editor who has advocated on my behalf) had told him and other members of senior management as much.”

In the 16-tweet thread posted Sunday, Sonmez also claimed that she was barred from the topic during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, as he was accused sexual assault by Christine Blasey Ford.

“I’ve tried to keep my head down and just do my job the best I can, despite having to take myself off sexual assault-related stories at least once every week or two, sometimes even more often,” Sonmez wrote on Twitter, adding, “I faced no ban my first three months on the job. I wrote #MeToo -related stories with no problem. It was only once the Kavanaugh story broke in Sept. 2018 that the editors enacted one.

“It was lifted several months later, then reinstated in late 2019 when I was being attacked online after the publication of a story about the man who assaulted me,” she continued. “The ban has been in place ever since, for more than a year now.”

Following the Poltico report, journalist Elizabeth Spiers wrote an article on her Substack highlighting an unfortunate reality: “Sexual assault is not an extraordinary experience, at least not in the sense that it’s rare.”

“Experiences like these are invisible to many men, including, I would wager, the largely male management of The Washington Post. (They would argue that masthead-wise, there are a lot of women in leadership. And that’s true. But the masthead rarely reveals the power structure,” Spiers wrote. “That’s determined by who gets to make the final decisions.) This obliviousness is partly a function of the fact that men rarely witness assault themselves because these things usually happen when a woman is alone, or alone enough. Men only see them when they’re the perpetrators.”

Sonmez also addressed the toll her trauma has had on her mental health, writing, “My symptoms worsened — a whole lot of vacant staring, which I’ve been doing a fair amount of this weekend.”

She concluded the thread by addressing the “harm” the Post has inflicted by not prioritizing “their female and POC staff.”

“If I am attacked online by an army of misogynist trolls, that does not harm The Washington Post any more than my awesome colleague @seungminkim harms the Post by facing a relentless swell of racism online. Neither of us is less capable of doing our job due to our identity,” she wrote.

“It would be great if senior editors at the Post prioritized *actually supporting* their female and POC staff instead of presenting the appearance of doing so as they compete for the paper’s top job. This harms all of us. And now, back to my vacant staring.”

Update — March 29, 3:15 p.m. ET — Sonmez took to Twitter on Monday to announce that “the Post is rescinding its ban.”

“Hi all. I’ve been told by my editors that the Post is rescinding its ban,” she wrote. This is good news, but it’s unfortunate that it had to come at such a high emotional toll, and after my distress was dismissed for years. I’m taking time to rest and process. Thank you for your support.”

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