I believe in the right to speak the truth, even if it's uncomfortable.

There are No Girls on the Internet.

As a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridge Todd and this is there are No Girls on the Internet.

America feels like it is doing a speed run into full on crackdowns on free expression.

In the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder, MSNBC's Matthew Dowd was fired for saying something as basic as hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which lead to hateful actions.

He told Katie Kuric this week that the network admitted his comments were misconstrued, but that they still refused to give him his job back.

Late night hosts Jimmy Kimmel called out Mageth for exploiting Kirk's death, and Disney cave to FCC pressure, firing him only to whiplash less than a week later, and announced his show would return this week.

Jimmy Kimmel's firing got a lot of attention, and rightly so.

But we need to make sure that black women, who are so often the canary and a coal mine for additional attacks on freedom of expression, are not ignored because after eleven years at the Washington Post.

Karen Attia was pushed out too, And at this point, I don't even think any of this is really about what people actually said about Charlie Kirk.

It's about sending a message dissent will be punished.

Sadly, this is not even Karen's first rodeo.

The last time that we spoke, her course on race, international Relations and Media at Columbia University had just been canceled, scrapped under pressure from the Trump administration.

When we sat down to speak this time around, it was really clear Karen is still working to process all of this, but she's also not giving up without a fight.

How are you?

I know, it has been a rough couple of days, A lot going on.

Just how are you as a human?

How am I as a human?

I sort of I think I'm just like one big, like adrenaline popsicle.

I don't know what an adrenaline popsicle like would look like or taste like.

It's just gosh, I've gotten so much sort of support questions.

I'm still kind of processing the fact that I was let go from a job, a place that i've sort of called my institutional work home.

For the last seleven years.

So it's definitely a hurricane.

I am an adrenaline popsicle being tossed around in this hurricane, it feels, but I'm glad to be here.

I'm glad to you know, spend some time kind of processing everything here.

Yeah.

The last time that you and I spoke, it was about resistant summer school course on race and media that you developed after Colombia pretty shamelessly cave to the Trump administration and canceled this super popular, well liked class you've been teaching there.

I kind of hate that this is a theme.

But did that prepare you at all or set the stage for what ended up happening at.

The post what's that shirt where some of where it's like, oh, you study the culture, I am the culture.

You know.

I kind of feel a little bit of like, oh, you study cancel culture, I am the cancel culture right now.

Yeah, obviously, you know, two sides of a coin.

Colombia obviously being a place where I went to school at Columbia, was a graduate student at the School of International and Public Affairs, So it was always a dream to be able to give back to an extent in my capacities both an alumna and a working journalists to get back to students there.

So having that opportunity sort of taken away.

Like that hurt.

This one is deep with the Washington Post, the opinion sections.

This is my This was the only major journalism job I've had state there for eleven years.

When I was hired to work in the opinion section, my job was to well, not just right myself.

I actually started as an editor, so to uplift other voices, especially you know, voices I disagreed with.

I did it all sorts of ranges of things, and so it really it really is and still processing it hurts a lot.

I was just doing my job.

I was just the same thing, talking about race and power in America, which is what I was hired to do as a calmnist.

And to see this sort of one to eighty shift caught me off guard for sure.

So did Columbia prepare me for this?

No?

Not how prepared for something like this.

No one is prepared for something like this.

I've been in my you know, I've being in the journalism business, being in sort of public figure, being definitely a woman with opinions on the internet, much less, a woman who's paid to give opinions on the Internet comes with its fair share of critique and controversy and sometimes backlash.

This time, the comments that I made in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting, the shootings in Colorado, I did not experience much of any Backlasher's pretty tame.

I've had some spicy takes, I know, and I've had a spicy hot Cheeto takes.

This wasn't one of them.

And if anything, I was extremely somber and lamenting the state of America, and somehow that trips some fire line, particularly talking about white man.

I was not prepared for that, because I've been doing my job.

I've been prepared to do my job and talk about these things.

I was trained to do this.

So being punished for doing what I was trained to do, now, of course, I wasn't prepared for that.

Let's talk about that, because you have really spoken about how there's some misinformation really floating around online about what exactly happened.

So set the record straight for us here.

I read the letter that you posted from the post on your substack bullshit.

In my opinion, I will just say that's my take of what they said, But tell us what exactly happened.

What is the Post saying?

Yeah, So in the actual letter that I got, I know there was a lot of sort of assumptions, rumors, circulations that you know when you say, in the aftermath of the Kirk shooting, people were looking for I only had one post where I mentioned Kirk directly by name, and it was a characterization of his views on black women.

There was a quote going around, I think from the Nation that you know, Kirk had said black women black processing power.

Had then got updated to you know, he was talking specifically about Joy Reid and certain prominent black women.

But nevertheless, this is someone who is long characterized black women, particularly professional black women, interesting me as not being deserving of the job.

That was the only time I referenced Kirk.

What the Post took issue with, and should I read it myself, is that is that the is that the better approach?

I was a hused of gross misconduct.

Let's see, let's pull the letter up right here.

So, Karen, from the head of HR, I'm writing to inform you that the Post is terminating your employment, effective immediately, for gross misconduct.

Let's see here they said your postings on Blue Sky about white men in response to the killing of Charlie Klirk do not comply with our social media policy.

For example, you posted quote refusing to tear my clothes and smear my ashes, smear ashes on my face, and performative morning for a white man that espoused violence is not the same as violence.

End quote.

And this is the second post they are making an example of quote.

Part of what keeps America so violent is the assistance that people perform care, empty goodness and absolution for white men who spouse hatred and violence.

The end quote.

The post says basically that social media postings be respectful and that it's prohibited to disparage people based on their race, gender, or other protected characteristics.

So basically me doing my job talking about not actually talking directly about Kirk now, rather about a pattern, documented pattern of shooters, whether it's mass mass shooters, whether it's politically motivated violence, AKAID, domestic terrorism.

The facts and the data are there.

The overwhelming perpetrators of this crime are white men.

I think if you pull out a gun and shoot someone, that is a violent act.

Every single post I referenced to white man, I said violent, white man, and somehow the Post is interpreting what I am saying as to be that I am being racist against white men.

I never said all white men.

I never even said vost white men.

I very specifically said those who commit violence and espouse hatred and violence.

I don't think that's an inherent characteristic of white men, but maybe the post does.

I'm sure we will see their reasoning soon enough.

But yes, that is the real stated reason I was fired as a race calmness, race gender, human rights calmness because I mentioned white men.

It all kind of sounds like an insult to white that the post is sort of insulting white men because you said violent white men.

That's what I'm talking about, And they're saying, oh, that's an insult to white men everywhere.

And I was like, well, what do you think about?

What?

Like?

It's sort of a revealing way to put it, don't you agree?

I don't know what was going to do.

I was very clear for me, as a human, as a writer, words mean things.

I put the what's them?

I'm thinking back to my grammar.

My grammar day is the restrictive relative clause, meaning this is a subset of a demographic that has been documented by the FBI, the National Institute of Health Research, up to research and study after study, not only of the carrying out of these crimes, but also of the media coverage, the tone, the framing, the angles.

When we find out that the perpetrators are white men, right, we get this sort of he came from a good home, he was an all American boy.

You know, there is a very very very specific and small group of humans who do those sort of things.

But you know, so anyone can go back.

That's why I posted the letter, and a lot of people judge for themselves, and that's why I left up my social media postings.

I still stand behind what I said because it was the truth.

I was doing my job.

This is reflected in data.

Again, you know, i'd be I'm still stunned, honestly, I still I don't know.

My job is that words mean things.

I don't know why the post has decided that that's not what they're gonna do.

And you know, and you know, in my post, anyone can go back and see that I was actually you know, referencing more so lamenting the empty rhetoric we have around political violence, the thoughts and prayers that this is not who we are.

The political violence has no place here.

And that sort of thing again in a context not just of Charlie kirk shooting, but we had another shooting that day.

Yeah, in Colorado with a right wing extremist, suspective perpetrator.

No one's really talking about it.

Who knows the names of those kids, I'm sure plenty of people do, But who got the national visuals the mornings death frets on their behalf?

Not those kids in Colorado.

So in my mind, I'm taking that as a holistic picture of where we are.

Don't only when it comes to gun violence in America, but when it comes to who do we give care and attention too?

Yeah, as those as the as the victims, who do we rhetorically sort of demand mourning from.

Speaking of mourning?

On Sunday, there was a public event honoring Charlie Kirk.

They called it a funeral, but it looked more like a political rally, pyrotechnics.

Trump on stage, railing against Biden and his other political opponents, claiming without evidence that tiln all causes autism, and even talking about a federal takeover of Chicago for Charlie.

And that's when Trump mentioned Kirk at all, because as over the top as the whole thing was, Charlie Kirk honestly kind of sounded like an afterthought.

And honestly, it wasn't hard to think that Jimmy, Kimmel and Karen had been right.

The whole spectacle seemed less about grief and honoring someone's legacy and more about politics wrapped up in the language of mourning.

Something that really sticks with me about your post, the post the post quoted in the letter was that it seemed to me, I mean, I understood the point that you were making clearly right.

It's about excessive mourning and the expectation of excessive emotionality.

Who gets that?

And I don't know if you saw they were calling it a funeral, but I'm gonna call it a rally.

I don't know if you saw that yesterday.

After watching that spectacle, it is difficult to disagree with that characterization that you laid out on that post that.

I mean, I don't think anybody could watch it and not say this seems excessive.

The funeral that was held.

Really, when I watched it, your words were echoing.

It was looming large as I was like, oh, Karen really called it, this does seem excessive hashtag?

I was right, you know, even even before the funeral, right, like even I think I think even right after my termination letter came through and again like I hmm, I did not even I posted that on Blue Skid.

No backlash, you know, really people were like, Okay, yeah, you know, maybe a little bit of oh shouldn't you give more space?

Like, but largely I just went on my with my day and maybe about yeah, I mean twelve thirteen hours later the next day I missed a phone call from the post and then within minutes like notice of termination, right, and then I think I see later either that afternoon or the day after, might have been the day after I saw a post from Nancy Grace.

I think this is once they identified a suspect, an alleged suspect, and Kirk's murder repped.

Nancy Grace all of a sudden starts talking about we should pray for this man, right something like that.

The switch up was so like like like a switch was.

Flipped Olympic gold medal, I know, like the energy with which like they were able to do that pivot could power a thousand suns, like I was right, because again, this is a pattern.

It's not just me, this is this is a pattern.

This has been documented, that documented about America, This has been documented about the disparate treatment.

So of course, you know not going to be surprised what what you know Sunday has turned into.

And when I say part of normalizing the espousing of of hatred also means absolving Charlie Kirk's shooter.

We remember the cries for blood, and we would get them if only he was a leftist.

Let's take a quick break.

At our back.

Over the weekend, investigators announced there was no evidence linking Charlie Kirk's suspected shooter, Tyler Robinson, to any left wing groups, despite the administration's pledge to crack down on left wing groups in retaliation for Kirk's murder, and when the suspect was finally named, the governor of Utah openly expressed disappointment that it wasn't someone they could easily demonize.

Instead, he admitted it was one of ours.

For thirty three hours, I was I was praying that if this had to happen here, that it wouldn't be one of us.

That somebody drove from another state somebody came from another country.

Sadly that that prayer was not answered the way I had hoped for.

Remember what the Utah governor said, Oh.

He was the suspect.

Wasn't what we were hoping.

He's just a homegrown white guy.

Not even just hoping what he was praying.

He was praying to God.

He was hoping that.

It was a divine act of God that the person would be someone that they could easily more easily go actor, someone from another country, someone who was not quote one of us, right, so documented when the shooter, when shooters have been documented to be white men.

This is just a representative of the pattern that I was talking about, the absolution, the sort of I've already seen the headlines all American kids for Tyler Robinson.

So yeah, I'm just sitting there and I'm like, called it, called it, and I lost my job for that.

I know, in the scheme of things, this is not the biggest deal.

And I don't want to spend too much time on it because I understand it's not a huge deal.

But you know, in media, I have been part of layoffs, part of I've been you know, in the media, you see some things and I do feel that it matters how an organization chooses to let you go.

There's a way.

Nobody likes getting let go, nobody likes having like being fired, but there is a way to do it that I think signals whether or not this is respectful.

And I do think it matters how you're let go.

You gave the Post eleven years of your life and they fire you in an email.

You know, it's not even I think that not even having a conversation with you before sending that which is really doesn't sit right with me.

I know when the schema of things are probably not tripping off of these little details, but something in bad it is like, that's a choice.

There are ways to do there are that somebody made a choice to do it that way.

Yeah.

Well, and not just that, I mean I, as I said in my substat post, I categorically reject those charges in that letter.

I think that it was a breach of their policy and responsibility to me.

I think it was a breach and abominable breach of basic journalistic standards right that we are being told to uphold.

And this is what I would have said had I been given the right to reply.

So so yeah, of course all of these things, all these things matter, and and yeah, I mean this is this is a place not only that I gave eleven years too, but for me, my path into not only into journalism, my sort of career actually started in freedom and expression work, as I was a press freedom analyst for Freedom House.

Actually my full right scholarship is on looking at freedom of radio speech actually in Ghana.

So journalists and people being able to express themselves in the conditions the economic and political conditions that they work under was actually something that is sort of deep at the core of what my work has been even before I started as a professional journalist.

And this is why the Washington Post part of the reason why Washington Post hired news because I had this commitments to these principles.

Keeping those principles at the forefront of her work has not always been pretty.

In twenty seventeen, journalist Jamal Koshoji began writing for The Post under Karen's editorship.

Just over a year later, the TV cameras captured him entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

He never came out.

With her long career of defending press freedom, Karen became the Guardian of Jamal's legacy.

The Post devoted its entire op ed page to his final column, delivered to Karen by his assistant the day after he disappeared.

In her preface, Karen wrote, the Post held off publishing it because we hoped Jamal would come back to us so that he and I could edit it together.

Now I have to accept that is not going to happen.

This is the last piece of his I will edit for the Post.

This column perfectly captures his commitment and passion for freedom in the Arab world, a freedom he apparently gave us life for.

I will be forever grateful he chose the Post as his final journalistic homb one year ago and gave us the chance to work together.

So for a lot of people maybe who followed my career as an opinions editor, I was the editor of Jama Kashukci who was murdered were expressing himself in the Washington Post, murdered by Saudi agents, and I put my safety on the line.

I had to get personal security.

I risked a lot, gave up a lot to advocate not only for Jamal, because I realized advocating for Jamal putting helping to put the Washington Post as a symbol of how it should treat its writers, how it should stand behind its writers even when it's hard.

The Washington Post became a symbol for that, and I very much was tied into that.

It hurts by heart.

I'm stunned and I'm frankly befuddled as to now my connection with the Washington Post not only has been severed, but the relationship has now been inverse that I've been punished, eliminated from their ranks for being the journalist I was trained to be in that doing the work I was paid to do.

So it's almost, you know, as if you know.

Obviously I did not lose my life like Jamal did, but facing the same sort of pressures that Jamal did is just a chilling reminder of where we now find ourselves in like careening towards the ABYSS in terms of press freedom.

Because again it's not just me, you know, I just I got fired two days afterwards or so or a week afterwards.

It was Jimmy Kimmel before me I, or at least before I went public.

Matthew Down REMEMBERSNBC.

So I realized this is part of a climate of chilling of free speech, of critique.

I'm not just chilling.

I mean this is beyond canceling.

This is a certain sort of cruelty to it.

You know, it's not just cancel culture.

They're using the FCC.

Yeah to Jimmy Kimmel, They're abandoning process with me, right, this is a really chilling and scary moment for the I was just doing my job.

I've just been sticking to the values that I've always had for the last fifteen years of not only my professional life but my personal life.

That I believe in the right to speak the truth, even if it's uncomfortable.

And it's sad that The Washington Post has decided to put itself on the wrong side of history in the spite when it seemed like just a couple of years ago, it seemed really invested in being on the right side of history when it came to silenced and challenged journalists.

Now, I don't know, yeah, yeah, I remember so the version of the Post that you just described, when they were really championing your work to support free expression, expression of journalists, protecting and standing up for journalists.

I remember that, and looking back now, it feels like they were dining out on an agenda that you were setting, and it just the way that they I know it's a very different post today, but does that feel kind of hollow?

Now?

They were more than happy to align themselves with your work, the work where you were like putting your safety on the line in very real ways.

And then also I remember just so clearly that you would say, this is just should be a warning to everybody.

Right he was a legal US resident right until like and we still you know, they never found his body.

Like the way that you were signaling that as a call to all journalists and the importance of the need to protect the reexpression of journalists.

I think the Post was more than happy to make that make your work their mission.

Does that feel kind of hollow?

Now?

Good question?

I'm still processing.

It's like, wait, who what was real?

What wasn't?

I will say, though there were and happened and still remain journalists at that paper who stand Tanto's down on these values just as much as I do.

This is a question for leadership and for our owner.

Frankly and I you know, credit to he's now past rest in peace.

But Fred Hyatt, who was the editorial page editor who hired me, who very much, even though we disagreed politically on many things, and he really modeled what it looked like to be a thoughtful but courageous journalist and stand up for writers.

He'd written and reported from some of the most under democratic places you can think of, and my sort of aligning human rights, journalistic freedom very much was inspired by him.

At the Post.

He was honest.

I remember when I told him that Jamal was killed, even though he had never met Jamal.

Fred Hye burst into tears.

That was real.

That is who we had to me, That was who the Post was.

Fred Hie is gone now, not gone.

He still influences me.

I still try to live up to his sort of instructions an example, Yes, uh so clearly.

I don't think all white men are bad.

Fred Hie is one of the biggest influences of my career.

I cite him so often.

He is his words that as an opinion journalist we get to write, you know, we aren't limited to just writing about the world as it is.

We have an obligation to write about the world as it should be.

I think about that almost every day, and so to me, you know, I think of You know, the Post or any institution is a gathering of people at the end of the day, really, and so you know, obviously it's a mixed picture for me, but I still hold on to what I learned about how to be a fighter for other writers because of the Post, because of people like Fred Hyatt, even the former publisher Fred Ryan.

They went all out for Jamaal, for Jason Rezion, freedom journal.

I think that was real.

Yes, more, after a quick break, let's get right back into it.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos bought the Post in twenty thirteen.

At first, the scuttle butt was that editorial wouldn't change much, but Bezos did not hold to that for very long.

Let's talk about the current owner of The Post, Jeffrey Bezos, living in DC.

You know, he owns my local newspaper, he owns where I get my groceries, he owns where I get my healthcare.

Kind of feels like he's taking over more and more of my life.

But I remember when he bought the Post, he said that he wanted the opinions section to champion personal liberty.

You know, he wanted columnists to be provocative to he wanted you know, opinions and takes that people might not always agree with to be published.

What changed, I don't.

Know, because that was the marching orders you just describe, were the marching orders I heard in person from him himself.

So well, I think everybody, it's been clear, even in my firing, that there's been a change, a profound fun and I think, like I said, I mean, there's still going to be a time and place where so much more of this will be addressed.

In my case, so hashtag skateen, hashtag watching the space.

But I can say this is a really chilling moment when we're thinking about not only is client this climate Excuse me, I think now for me, I mean I've always been interested in sort of media ownership and media policy and media laws and the fact that so much of our media is owned by such a small, small, small group of people, right, not only our newspapers but TD networks.

I mean, look at our social media platforms.

We have a concentration of power here that has always been a recipe for you know, it has not always been a great sign for our media ecosystem.

Right, But that being said, I mean the hope one has when being you know, employed by particularly a very well resourced organization, is that you'll be able to do amazing journalists and you'll have folks who will have your back.

Right.

And so I suppose you know, we're just again just in a bigger climate.

It's bigger than just me.

I mean again, they are me, they are Jimmy, they are Jimmy Kimmel.

Right, I think this is a bigger sort of climate in which is becoming increasingly dangerous.

Two, speak your mind.

And if, like I'm not exaggerating, if we want to hold on to democracy, the very basis of the rest of our sort of rights and human rights is the ability to even speak and call out a problem, identify a problem so that we can fix it, coalesce, to organize it, so that we can open people's imaginations and minds to address it, so that we can even have this so called debate they claim they want to have, right unless they're talking about something else other than quote unquote free speech and debate.

Is it really free speech and debate that they really want?

Because you need actual free speeching, You need journalists to be able to do their jobs, to be able to collect and report on and to provide framing and commentary on the world for people, so that there can be an honest debate.

But if what you're actually looking for is power and rhetorical domination, that's a different conversation.

But you know, it's just it's it flies in the sort of general logic of all the folks who are saying personal liberties, free markets, none of those can be achieved without free speech.

Mm hmm point one period.

I mean to that point.

When I saw that you were being let go at the Post, I was sort of waiting because I'm thinking, well, certainly, in two days time, I'm going to get a one on one sit down on a on a mainstream news show or something.

I was sort of like waiting to see, like who's gonna who's gonna get the first interview.

So I was even more shocked when I heard that you said, really, no mainstream press reached out to you, that the first interviews that you did were with podcasters and independent press.

That's actually why I got in touch, because I was like, certainly, you're you are going to be booked full of interviews.

You said I saw in an interview with I think Jim Acosta, you said that this was a nine at the times for mainstream media that nobody was reaching out to you to talk about this.

Nobody wanted to really talk about this story from mainstream press.

What do you think that says about about where mainstream media is at right now?

Yeah, so I'll clarify, so there will be there were people who who definitely like reached out.

I got media, like the mainstream media increase, but as far as sort of the primetime TV, major network like anchor one on ones to be able to really unpack this, not as sort of two minute soundbites, I think.

I mean, we were the ones trying to pitch, like, hey can we take like no major takers for the TV the TV anchors.

So the first ones who who that I actually sat down with after two or three days of trying was Don Lemon in a cafe and eating scrambled eggs, and he was in genies.

I saw the little the little, the little clip you put out the short here's a little taste of Karen talking to Don Lemon over scrambled eggs at a diner.

The fact that.

You're the first one to sit down with me and we're just sitting in a cafe is like a visualization of the path, at least for me, that I've gone being pushed in front of the world for free speech and protection of journalists and freedom and expression.

When my writer was killed, I got the star mainstream media treatment.

And it's hitting me that whatever new journey this is gonna be for me in terms of defending the right to express yourself that you and I are sitting here eating scrambled eggs.

There are a few who reached out, but they wanted the sort of you know ensemble, and I get that that was their you know thing, But I was like.

No, this is gonna this is gonna be big.

And this is all before Jimmy Kimmel became an issue.

So yeah, Jim Acosta was one of the first to reach out of stackers actually, and it just it's compared to how I was sort of pursued by the major TV networks again this is TV when Jamal Kascucci was killed.

Compared to like, wow, trying to almost like like people to have to have me on Aaron especially you know, being the last as the last full time black opinion writer left at the post in Washington, d C.

Which, for folks who don't know, so I've lived in DC my whole life.

That is crazy.

You know, the post is is global, but it's also my local hometown paper.

It is the paper that has been on my front stoop of my apartment every day for the last I don't know ten years.

DC used to be called Chocolate City.

It's like it's no longer a majority black city, but it's a heavily black city.

Especially against the back of a of an increasing hostile takeover of DC which we are all witnessing, to have no black opinion columnists left is crazy.

There is no other way to put it.

Like it boggles my mind, It truly is.

It just doesn't make any sense.

We're We're in the upside down.

Yeah, exactly.

So amongst that backdrop are a lot of these folks, no knowing, I don't necessarily hold it against them, but it was just telling that maybe for this story, which again this is against the backdrop of people being docksed po were their comments on Charlie Kirk again Matthew Dowd being fired by MSNBC for very tame also tame comments on Charlie Kirk.

The threats coming from to Charlie Kirk's not even his fans, but from the administration over this.

I'm not I'm not even It's just that has been is the climate.

This is being used to purge, to fire, to punish, you know who they deemed to be their quote unquote you know, enemies.

Yeah, so I'm not the only one.

I just happened to be again before Jimmy kim Ah happened to be a pretty high profile price dear they got.

But yeah, it was just also telling that I don't know, it felt it's been feeling liberating to be honest, be able to speak more freely with independent media people who are building their own audiences and platforms.

And to me, I'm like, wow, is this really the sign of the times, particularly that I'm sitting down with Don Lemon and who has once had his own primetime show that was also canceled.

I didn't and Joe I was like, Don was pushed out of CNN because of the in twenty eighteen, because of shit that went down with the Trump administration.

Like you have a little club.

It seems like we've got a little rebel alliance building right now being being forced out, some of us more dramatically than others.

I think mine is pretty dramatic.

But they have been the ones to embrace me, like wholehearted me and like not just have me on, but just to say, like Karen, it's gonna be okay, it's gonna be all right, like and I've been really, really, just as a human grateful for that because I don't know, as I told Don Lemon, and I'll say here like especially not just what happened to me, but in Jimmy Kimmel's case, the FCC getting involved again.

For me, as someone who's studied media policy not just in the US but around the world, and studied tactics being used to science the media, this is this is code yellowish yellowish red like orange like this is this is bad.

This is bad.

I for for sort of the corporate corporate media.

This week, you know, you'll see me around a bit more, you know, doing doing the rounds.

But yeah, last week, that was that was that was chilling.

I'll say that.

More after a quick break.

Let's get right back into it.

I'm curious what you think about this.

I actually don't even think it's about Charlie Kirk.

I think that's a convenient excuse and convenient timing for the post to chip away at the last vestiges of what the Post used to be before Bezos took over, to push out voices that the administration doesn't like.

I also think it's you've you've alluded to this, but just so folks really know, we've spent so long talking about cancel culture, and when what we're really talking about is like, oh, a private company parted ways with somebody that they had worked with them or put or like took them off of their social media platform.

This is the administration using the power of the FCC, you know, TEP TEP to set the agenda of hiring and firing based on what is going to be friendly to the administration.

It just I just if I can't help but feel all the conversations that we had about free speed, where we all had to entertain that for so long, when it actually is an administration using their power in this way, I just don't feel like we're having the conversation that really aligns with the with the alarm that you have just said.

We're not having conversations that masts reality.

You mean, correct, Yes, that's a perfect way to put it there, you go.

That's why I was used to be an opinions columnist still am We'll just do it in other ways.

Gosh, m let's just say things are bad and they can't get worse.

I have said for a long time, both internally and externally, that this is the time for for people to really organize dand together.

Shout out to the Washington Post Union.

I know basically as we speak, they're raging war for me inside.

Right, So and again, when I think of the Post, it's not just about Post leadership, like I know my colleagues are.

They've praised, they've condemned my firing, the issue a statement.

You know, there are processes that are are going on that.

You know.

I'm I'm a longtime proud union member.

This is why unions are important.

Right that being said, how can I do this without being How can I be talk about reality without being super cryptic?

Look like shit is getting real, and it's getting real, like real fast.

I am deeply worried about America, about this country.

I am profoundly worried for not just journalists, particularly black journalists.

I do not see it as a coincidence that bridget as you said, and in DC in particular, as this administration is literally trying to life forcibly recolonize this place military occupation, literal checkpoints, where people are having to feel like they need to carry around their papers, where the Supreme Court has basically said that racial profiling is okay.

I do not see it as a coincidence that these folks have taken out the entire line of black opinion journalists at the Washington Post.

Opinion journalists, for those who don't know, is different than sort of quote unquote regular reporters who are just thought to stick to the facts and the who, what, when, where?

Why is of things and all that.

Opinion journalists we get to go beyond that.

Still use facts, but go beyond that to say this is what this means, and this is why this matters, and this is how we should prepare.

We get to say this is right and this is wrong.

If I was still there at the Post, I would be saying, what is happening to DC right now?

What is happening to journalists right now being taken out?

This is wrong, and this is scary, and this is a historical warning.

I teach this in my class for race and Media that I'm already seeing the patterns that I teach about that have led to unspeakable moments in history.

Okay, so I am saddened at the place that I've spent eleven years of my life defending press, not only press freedom, but trying to do my best to get America to be I don't know in a better place that we find ourselves here.

We find ourselves in this place where I'm not sure how we get out of this, Okay, but what I can say is the old ways won't work.

The old institutions have shown this who they are or who they're choosing to be in this moment, and this is where, you know, one uses all leavers.

And like I said, I there will be time and place for me to use different levers of you know, accountability and telling my side of the story with everything.

But for now, it's just it just it feels like a brink sort of moment.

And you know, the example of sort of that I've been preaching for a long time, people power.

No one's coming to save us, y'all.

It's not going to be.

It's not going to be the billionaires, it's not going to be the politicians.

It's not going to be.

Like I said in my last column, Barack Obama, who by the way, came to my defense.

I saw I make your last column was sort of a critique of the way people are talking about Obama and who was like he was like, oh, what happened to her is awful?

Right, So that was like the before time.

So basically the last political focus column that the Post allowed me to do before they fired me was a critique of Baraco None, I mean Obama.

But again, I'm always interested in social discourse.

So I was watching the social discourse and everybody's watching things go like real going pear shape, real fast, going south, real fast.

And I saw a lot of commentaries saying, well, Barack Obama, where are you?

Barack?

Stop podcasting and stop shooting hoops and come and save us.

And I was just like, y'all need to chill out, honestly, on two levels.

First of all, like, yeah, so Obama is an amazing, articulate president, but like, nice speeches aren't gonna save us too, he's out of power.

Three, let's look at his immigration records.

Okay, so what exactly are y'all asking for right now?

When this man had the moniker to porter in chief and appointed Tom Holman not only importanted but gave him in presidential medal.

So anyway, all that I laid out in my piece and you know, facts, data, but that was my opinion.

The Obama folks reached out and they were like, hah, we liked your idle emotional support president.

That was funny.

But here's what we didn't like this, like this, this, And I was like, okay, I disagree.

I still think there's a like I think these I think entire families being locked up is objectively terrible.

I think under your administration, children having to represent themselves in court is objectively terrible and set our country up for seeing what we see today.

What did they say?

We didn't wear masks though I'm like, okay, so it looked better, but you're like okay.

And that was the extent of the That was a debate, in my opinion, and we went on about our lives.

No one was calling for me to be locked up, no one was calling for the post to be fined, to be taken off of air.

And now a couple months later, Obama, the president that I criticized very publicly coming to my defense.

Obama not coming to say of US institute, US aren't coming to save us billionaires aren't coming to save us.

And one of the last questions I wanted to ask you is that you know, I have been an admirer of yours for a long time.

I followed your career as somebody who is in media.

I look at you and I think like, if my career and my background looked like yours, my parents would have been so happy.

You know, Ivy League education, working at Columbia, winning awards after award after award, working for the Post, and you know you essentially how I would put it in my community, it is like you did everything right right, Like all the things that you're supposed to do to get accolades, to get respect, to be taken seriously, you did.

And in the end, we're here.

And so I guess I feel, you know, institutions and connections to institutions aren't going to save us because they will always protect themselves in power.

And I think what happened to you just really shows that.

Are you Are you feeling that way at all?

Yeah?

I definitely went through my moments where I was just like, Wow, I did everything right, and I went to the fancy schools.

I went to Northwestern, I went to Columbia.

I went to the best of the best schools.

I gave up.

I worked for free to have radio internships just so I could break into the business.

Like and also, like I said, putting my safety on the line to advocate for Jamal, winning awards for that, all that to come to being fired by an email and being accused of that I am a risk to the Washington Posts.

After putting my life on the risk for the Washington Post.

I mean what I would say to that is like, you cannot be defined and find your worst and really anything external right, And I've come to peace with that.

I do not regret living a life that's been by my values, been my rules.

I I sort of have grown up.

I started at the Post when I was in my mid ish twenties late twenties or so, so I was quite young, and I was quite young having the responsibilities that I did, but I did them well.

I was a badass.

I still am and no one's going to take that away from me.

Like the work, the all of it speaks for themselves for themselves.

Awards are not trudos or not.

So I suppose this is this is a lesson for everyone, but particularly you know, women, generals, color, and people talk about imposter syndrome and all that stuff.

Find know what your values are and live those out.

That's that's the real reward.

That's the real kind of like I can honestly say, like this is this is my path, that this is ha been, you know, the start to something maybe even more beautiful in which I'm actually more free to to really be myself.

Actually, and you know, like I said, I I had the time of my life.

I'm at the post.

But hey, maybe the best is yet to come.

But again, this is this is not the end.

This isn't gonna stop me.

This is only just gonna make me like hotter and more badass.

What can I say?

I'll be all right, But you know, America, like the empire is collapsing, but I'm still like, like my look glass is still popping in my hair.

So you know, I'm still gonna write, and no one's gonna I've always said that as long as I have a pen and paper, I'm still gonna write.

Like so if anything I don't have, I have a shadow over my head anymore.

There's still much to come on this case, but I am looking forward to what comes next.

Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi.

You can reach us at Hello at tangodi dot com.

You can also find transcripts for today's episode at TENG Goody dot com.

There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Tod.

It's a production of iHeartRadio, an unbossed creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer.

Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.

Michael Almado is our contributing producer.

I'm your host, Bridget Tod.

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