The Washington Post reinstates reporter—she immediately tries to cancel her boss

Mere hours after being reinstated from a suspension by the Washington Post, Felicia Sonmez took to Twitter to start another mob. The reporter, who thought it was prudent to tweet out Kobe Bryant’s 2003 rape allegation on the day he and his daughter died tragically, attempted to launch a new cancel campaign—this time her quarry is her boss, Marty Baron.

January 29, 2020

It’s a bold move to try to get the internet to attack your boss for suspending you after you’ve been reinstated. Basically she wants to blame him for her own bad judgement. This was immediately applauded by disgraced defamation artist Talia Lavin—a person whose major accomplishments in media include lying about a military veteran’s tattoo in an attempt to get him fired, and lying about being “chased out” of a free-speech conference. (We were there. This didn’t happen.)

On Tuesday, in The Post Millennial, we noted how Sonmez’s saga was a cautionary tale showing just how toxic cancel culture truly is. We pointed out that she smeared Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Atlantic writer Caitlin Flanagan, Reason contributor Emily Yoffe, and her former colleague Jon Kaiman.

While we hoped that she might have learned the lesson that participating in witch hunts and online mobs never ends well; we were, predictably, wrong. A mere 24 hours later, here she is, trying to ruin another career. The truly depressing thing is, she might just be successful yet again.

In the end, we’re not defending Marty Baron. It’s the tactics being used that are in question. We are advocating for a better way to handle this kind of conflict. If the only culture you know is cancel culture, then you will wind up tragically cancelled and pathetically uncultured.