- Barack Obama criticized the dismissal of Ghanaian-American journalist Karen Attiah from The Washington Post.
- Obama described the firing as government pressure on media under the Trump administration, calling it a free speech issue.
- Karen Attiah, the Post’s last full-time Black opinion writer, was dismissed on September 15, 2025.
- Her firing followed social media posts about political violence, race, and gun control after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
- Attiah argued she was targeted for resurfacing Kirk’s past comments insulting Black women, including Michelle Obama.
- She had worked at the Post since 2014 and founded its Global Opinions section after Jamal Khashoggi’s murder.
- The Washington Post Guild defended her, calling the dismissal unjust, while critics accused her of misrepresenting Kirk’s remarks.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama has denounced the controversial firing of Ghanaian-American journalist Karen Attiah from The Washington Post, describing it as a worrying assault on free expression.
Obama, posting on X on Friday, September 19, 2025, argued that the Trump administration had pushed “cancel culture” to a dangerous level by pressuring media outlets to silence voices it disliked. He stressed that such government interference was exactly what the First Amendment sought to protect against, urging news organizations to resist political coercion rather than yield to it.
Karen Attiah, who was dismissed on September 15, had been a prominent figure at the Post since 2014. She rose to global prominence as the founding editor of the paper’s Global Opinions section following the 2018 murder of columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Until her dismissal, she remained the paper’s last full-time Black opinion columnist.
Her firing came days after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated on September 10. Attiah had published a series of posts on social media addressing gun violence, race, and extremism, in which she resurfaced a 2023 remark by Kirk that mocked the intelligence of prominent Black women, including Michelle Obama. The Washington Post described her posts as unacceptable and a potential safety risk to staff, a claim Attiah rejected as baseless.
The journalist, whose parents are Ghanaian, has insisted her comments condemned violence rather than incited it. She has since received strong backing from the Washington Post Guild, which labeled her termination “unjust” and an affront to free speech.
Meanwhile, critics on the right have accused Attiah of twisting Kirk’s words, but she maintains her posts were a fair and necessary critique in the wake of his killing.
The controversy has ignited a wider debate about media independence, political pressure, and the shrinking space for dissenting voices in American journalism.
