The newspaper wouldn’t let Felicia Sonmez cover stories about
Sexual Misconduct. That policy was to the Post’s detriment
Felicia Sonmez had to flee her home. In early 2020, after the death of the
basketball player Kobe Bryant, Sonmez, a longtime
BREAKING news reporter at the
Washington Post, tweeted a link to a Daily Beast story about the 2003 rape allegation against Bryant. The tweet had no commentary and no editorializing by Sonmez, and yet on the day it appeared online, it was a lonely acknowledgment of Bryant’s compromised legacy amid a sea of uncritical praise for the dead athlete. In response, the reporter received a deluge of abuse from Bryant’s fans. They were angry at what they saw as Sonmez besmirching Bryant’s memory by acknowledging the accusation that he had been sexually violent towards a
Colorado woman; they were willing to avenge this disrespect, or so they claimed, with more violence against
Women. The name-calling escalated into threats, and some of those threats seemed credible. Her home address was published online. For her own safety, Sonmez went briefly into hiding.
Related: The
Washington Post silenced one of its reporters. It now owes her an apology | Arwa Mahdawi