In his new memoir, former Washington Put up editor Martin “Marty” Baron delivers a scathing evaluation of the newsroom drama that finally led to the controversial firing of star reporter Felicia Sonmez final 12 months.
Baron particulars how Sonmez’s habits on Twitter irked him all through his last years because the Put up’s govt editor. Her tweets about her experiences with sexual assault, together with attacking the Put up, her fellow colleagues, and different reporters notably enraged him, as did her posts referencing Kobe Bryant’s rape allegations on the day of the basketball star’s dying. It was her feedback on sexual assault that led to the ban on her masking it, he writes within the e-book.
The tumultuous tango between employer and worker prompted Sonmez to file a discrimination lawsuit towards the paper and, finally, resulted in her firing final 12 months in a reckoning that concerned a employees revolt and an overhaul of the paper’s social media insurance policies. Oral arguments in that lawsuit’s enchantment are set for November.
“It was laborious to fathom why sensible individuals couldn’t train extra self-control,” Baron writes about Sonmez in his new e-book, Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post, which is out Oct. 3. “More often than not, staffers had been merely informed to delete an offending tweet and be extra prudent. More often than not, they expressed remorse, dedicated to observing the principles, and sought to maneuver on. After which there was our most notable exception: Felicia Sonmez, who in the end opted to file a lawsuit towards The Put up and 6 prime editors, together with me, citing restrictions on what she might cowl due to her nonstop social media commentary.”
“I sit up for making our case to the District of Columbia Courtroom of Appeals on November 16,” Sonmez stated in a press release. “In our briefs in that enchantment, and within the arguments that will likely be made on November 16, we totally reply to the factors raised in Mr. Baron’s e-book.” Sonmez stated Baron didn’t attain out to her earlier than publishing to offer discover or search a response.
It’s the primary time Baron has spoken at size concerning the Put up’s experiences with Sonmez beneath his tenure, which resulted in February 2021. His frustration with Sonmez over her tweeting habits is probably not shocking, as Baron made his distaste for Twitter evident for years. His tweets, from a Twitter username nonetheless tied to his Put up persona, are rare, and he has posted sparingly on the platform since its Muskified rebrand to X.
“None of this was regular habits for Put up journalists, whatever the trauma or injustice they skilled of their private lives.”
Sonmez isn’t the one goal of Baron’s ire: Within the hefty tome, a duplicate of which was obtained and reviewed by The Every day Beast previous to its publication date, Baron discusses his annoyance with how a number of Put up journalists operated on Twitter, seemingly skating by the Put up’s insurance policies on social media conduct.
He recounts his disapproval of reporters Wesley Lowery and David Weigel and their habits on the platform. He took situation with how Lowery was outspoken on Twitter and sometimes “turned the story,” equivalent to when Lowery known as media retailers “cowardly” for not describing a few of then-President Trump’s feedback in July 2019 as racist. (“Deliberativeness isn’t cowardice,” Baron writes). Following Lowery’s feedback on a New York Occasions story on the GOP Tea Celebration and about Maureen Dowd, he acquired a disciplinary letter that warned of his potential firing if he continued commenting on “what, by any cheap studying, can be considered as your political views.”
Baron wrote that it was customary authorized language and that Lowery’s declare that Baron tried to fireside him was a “high-drama overstatement” of an early disciplinary strategy.
“We had no intention to ‘muzzle’ Wes, as he later characterized it,” Baron wrote. “However we weren’t going to again off requirements that ruled how The Put up’s journalists dealt with themselves in public settings.”
He additionally famous the Put up beneath his tenure was annoyed with Weigel’s tweets that irked some Democrats and Republicans alike, imposing a rule that Weigel wanted to clear his tweets with editors previous to posting. (Neither reporter continues to be working for the Put up; Weigel left in September 2022, three months after he acquired a one-month suspension, and Lowery left in January 2020 for CBS.)
Weigel, who now works for Ben Smith’s media startup Semafor, informed The Every day Beast it was an understanding with Put up editors that he needed to clear his tweets, not a written coverage, and it lasted for a restricted time. Lowery declined to remark.
In the meantime, Sonmez’s lawsuit towards Baron and the Put up was dismissed early final 12 months, although oral arguments in her enchantment will start in November. Her firing has additionally been appealed by way of the Put up’s editorial union, and the case has additionally been raised with the Nationwide Labor Relations Board. The NLRB case is at the moment pending.
Baron’s e-book goes past press statements and authorized briefs to opine on all of the issues he couldn’t speak about whereas on the Put up. Baron begins by recounting his and the Put up’s expertise with Sonmez throughout his tenure as govt editor. Sonmez was employed with out Baron’s preliminary involvement, he says, as “for some purpose” he was unavailable as she went by way of the interview course of. However nationwide editors had vouched for Sonmez resulting from her prolonged resume, together with previous Put up expertise, “so I gave my go-ahead,” he writes.
Baron acknowledges that the Put up was conscious in the course of the interview course of that Sonmez was a sexual assault survivor, as she had come ahead earlier within the 12 months with allegations of misconduct towards Jonathan Kaiman, a then-editor on the Los Angeles Occasions. He recounts how Sonmez got here ahead about her experiences and particulars the general public accounting of them at size, together with Kaiman’s denials.
Nonetheless, her social-media habits clearly irked him, because it contradicted the requirements he stated he believed journalists ought to maintain on-line. He notes examples of Sonmez criticizing totally different reporters on-line, together with one the place she advised an employer “rethink its affiliation” with a reporter who tweeted one thing she felt was directed at her.
“She portrayed herself as carrying the torch for different ladies accusers,” Baron writes about Sonmez’s habits. “All of this concerned her private life, and but she pinned considered one of her tweets about it to the highest of the Twitter account she utilized in her skilled capability at The Put up, mixing private and enterprise issues. Regardless of newsroom managers’ requests, she declined for weeks to take away the tweet. None of this was regular habits for Put up journalists, whatever the trauma or injustice they skilled of their private lives.”
Baron writes that the Put up positioned no restrictions on Sonmez on the time, however throughout Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate affirmation hearings in 2018—the place he was accused of sexual assault by Christine Blasey Ford—Sonmez gave a press release about Kaiman’s firing to The New York Occasions. Whereas the Put up’s authorized group accredited the assertion, at that time, Baron wrote that he and Sonmez’s editors felt some motion was wanted.
“Her instant supervisors and our requirements editor concluded that she couldn’t concurrently interact in that type of public advocacy whereas additionally masking the nation’s most high-profile dispute over sexual assault allegations—or something related,” Baron writes of her 2018 sexual-assault protection ban.
Sonmez’s second protection ban got here in 2019 after her tweets requesting corrections in a 2019 Motive journal article that advised Kaiman was unfairly punished. That resulted in March 2021, a month after Baron left the Put up. On the time, Baron writes, senior newsroom leaders permitted her to cowl tales involving sexual assault, and “to placate employees, additionally they acceded to her public insistence on an apology” from Put up administration. These editors, Baron writes, informed Sonmez in a letter they noticed “the methods during which we must always have supported you greater than we did.” Sonmez received that apology on March 31, two days after the ban was dropped.
“Having retired, I didn’t take part within the determination to put in writing that letter,” Baron writes. “It wasn’t one I might have despatched. We had enforced conventional journalistic requirements to safeguard The Put up’s status. That’s not one thing I might ever apologize for.”
Baron additionally chastises Sonmez for her habits the day Kobe Bryant died in January 2020. After information emerged that the basketball legend had perished alongside his daughter and different households in a helicopter crash, Sonmez had tweeted an outdated Every day Beast story that detailed the 2003 rape allegations towards Bryant. (He was charged with rape however the swimsuit was later dropped when the accuser refused to testify.) Her tweet led to a deluge of safety threats that prompted a Put up safety element for Sonmez.
“She needlessly stirred up animosity towards The Put up when individuals had been grieving and in shock, many having simply realized the information,” he writes. “She had injected herself crassly right into a story that nobody at The Put up had requested her to cowl or remark upon. She had seized on Kobe Bryant’s dying to press a trigger nearer to her coronary heart. To me, her tweet was atrociously timed and conceived.”
Whereas Baron acknowledges that Sonmez was dealing with a barrage of threats, even after administration had suggested her to delete her preliminary tweet, he writes that the safety group investigating them was “expressing exasperation that her irrepressible Twitter exercise was merely drawing further threats.”
“My administration colleagues and I might have ignored her tweet about Kobe Bryant, sparing ourselves inside battle, however my view was that her habits was reckless and offensive,” Baron writes. “Put up insurance policies urged respect for ‘style and decency.’”
Baron’s annoyance represents the schism that has roiled newsrooms just like the Put up since social media, and particularly Twitter, took maintain.
Throughout his tenure as govt editor, he was vocal about how reporters ought to conduct themselves on the platform, and his sentiment gave the impression to be shared amongst his top-editor class. Dean Baquet informed New York Occasions staffers in a memo early final 12 months to spend much less time on Twitter, arguing it was “particularly dangerous to our journalism when our feeds develop into echo chambers.”
Whereas Sonmez and different journalists’ tweets annoyed Baron, it was social media itself—and the way in which it usually undermined the information requirements he had upheld all through his profession—that gave him probably the most complications, he writes. It’s what partially prompted him to go away the accountability of making a brand new social-media coverage to his successor.
“One particular person’s want for self-expression shouldn’t take precedence over the establishment’s proper to guard its status by setting limits,” he wrote. “Journalists within the information division shouldn’t use Twitter accounts related to The Put up to advocate for causes near their coronary heart, regardless of how meritorious.”
