Washington Post Says Reporter’s Kobe Bryant Tweets Did Not Break Rules

The NewsGuild, the union that represents Post newsroom employees, was behind the letter that was sent to Mr. Baron and Ms. Grant. Twenty-four hours after it was drafted, more than 400 Post employees, including the investigative reporters David Fahrenthold and Dana Priest, the fashion critic Robin Givhan and the books critic Ron Charles, had added their names to it.

In the case referred to in Ms. Sonmez’s Twitter post, Mr. Bryant was arrested and charged with felony sexual assault after an encounter with a 19-year-old hotel worker in Vail, Colo. The criminal case was dropped in 2004, and the following year, Mr. Bryant reached a private settlement with the accuser. The terms were not disclosed.

In the letter, Post journalists described Ms. Sonmez’s tweet as “a statement of fact” and criticized their bosses for failing to take into account Ms. Sonmez’s personal history.

The reporter was one of two women who accused Jonathan Kaiman, a Beijing bureau chief of The Los Angeles Times, of sexual misconduct. After The Times conducted an investigation in 2018, Mr. Kaiman resigned.

When Ms. Sonmez used her Twitter account to object to how the story of her encounter with Mr. Kaiman was portrayed in the news media, The Post gave her a warning about her social media activity. Ms. Sonmez said she had filed a grievance over the warning through the NewsGuild, saying that she was defending herself against errors.

Mr. Baron and other top editors sent a memo to the staff after announcing the paper’s decision on Ms. Sonmez.

“The events of the last few days have surfaced concerns felt widely in the room,” it said.

After noting that The Post tries “to act quickly and thoroughly to protect and defend our colleagues from intimidation and threats,” the statement said that the paper’s “policies on the use of social media — which date from 2011 — are in need of an update.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/business/media/felicia-sonmez-kobe-bryant-tweet.html?emc=rss&partner=rss