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Original poster

Female Journalist Suspended After Tweeting Kobe Bryant Rape Article

110 replies

BorneoBabe · 27/01/2020 13:41

She didn't even write it, she tweeted it.

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/kobe-bryant-rape-case-felicia-somnez-washington-post-journalist-suspended-twitter-a9303736.html

OP posts:
Langsdestiny · 29/01/2020 13:55

Are those who write articles not mentioning the eape 'trolling' too, because thsts what it feels like to many women.

Langsdestiny · 29/01/2020 13:55

Sorry terrible typos.

2Rebecca · 29/01/2020 14:10

The Washington Post suspending her has just led to that becoming a story and leading to threads like this so people like me who never saw her tweet hear about the alleged rape. If the paper wanted to stop discussion of this they should have just asked her to delete the tweet for now and kept her employed. Stupid behaviour on their behalf. I dislike the tendency to deify people once they are dead.

Langbannedforsafeguardingkids · 29/01/2020 14:14

And just to be clear, death and rape threats are not okay but she should have taken those to the police not posted on Twitter to keep up the dogfight

Do we know she hasn't reported to the police? And would the police have done anything about these threats? When so few actual rapes are actually taken to court (which is kind of the point).

A friend of mine was raped. She went to the police, they collected physical evidence. A few months later he was still walking around the town she lived in. They. did. nothing. Her story is far from unusual. She was unbelievably distressed about it all and kept going back to the police and got nowhere. The stress of trying to deal with them compounded the PTSD she had from the rape.

I actually think publicising on Twitter or elsewhere in the media can sometimes be a woman's only real recourse - sunlight. Maybe it being public might actually prompt the police to do something.

quickkimchi · 29/01/2020 14:26

She foolishly violated many of the rules of misogyny. She knows it; her colleagues know it.

Doubleraspberry · 29/01/2020 15:17

How on earth is tweeting a link to a well written and pretty balanced article ‘trolling’? Why should she rewrite it if she thinks it expresses her own opinion?

Langsdestiny · 29/01/2020 16:30

If she had retweeted an article saying he was great would that have been trolling ? It certainly would have been a lie in the eyes of many.
Its astounding really, a man commits a hideous act, no effect on his job, status, etc etc, a woman tweets something and look at the consequences. Her situation has demonstrated the concerns women have worldwide.

viques · 29/01/2020 19:15

its astounding really

I wish that was true. Sadly it is par for the course where comparing women's reputations and men's reputations are concerned.

Something that really astounded me recently was on I'm a Celebrity. They had to guess the percentage of men who when polled felt that women were not 'equal ' to men (area of inequality not specified) the contestants, being woke and on tv chose the lower of the two percentages. They guessed wrong, it was the higher. 40%. It seems that getting on for half the male population secretly, or not so secretly, thinks that women are not equal human beings.

BobTheDuvet · 29/01/2020 19:28

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

PositiveVibez · 29/01/2020 19:34

he was so loyal not to his wife he wasn't.

His statement he made regarding the rape, only just fell short of him saying 'i did it'.

Ereshkigalangcleg · 29/01/2020 19:47

was horrified by the report of Kobe's death on R4 (don't know which show), and the man talking about him was saying - he was so loyal, stayed at lakers for however many years, so talented, and except for one allegation of sexual assault that was settled out of court no one ever said anything bad about him. The rape was just a throwaway comment, totally minimised. It was starkly shockingly awful.

I think this kind of thing is why some people weren't prepared to stay silent while all this over the top performative grief was going on.

BobTheDuvet · 29/01/2020 20:38

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

MangoFeverDream · 30/01/2020 06:18

How on earth is tweeting a link to a well written and pretty balanced article ‘trolling’? Why should she rewrite it if she thinks it expresses her own opinion?

It’s not journalism is my point. It’s just a lazy tweet that shit on someone who literally just died in a fire with their teenage daughter.

Also, don’t you think there would be additional context from his death and how people tend to whitewash things afterwards? There’s not an article in that very thing?

Nah, too much work. Let’s just retweet this and call it a day. This is not journalism!

Doubleraspberry · 30/01/2020 06:41

She was tweeting on her own account. Most journalists aren’t tweeting/retweeting original content the majority of the time. Your point really seems to be that retweeting an article regarding the rape accusation was trolling.

Quite how the article you suggest she write (and I suspect this story will now be part of the many versions of it that are now being written) would be shitting less on Kobe than retweeting this story isn’t enormously clear to me. You either mention the rape or you don’t.

MangoFeverDream · 30/01/2020 07:47

She was tweeting on her own account

She is a representative of WaPo and they do have social media guidelines. Your private account on Twitter is most definitely not private if you are a blue checkmarked reporter with your employer clearly stated. Any media worker gets these guidelines the first day on the job. It’s also a reflection on the media company like it or not.

isn’t enormously clear to me

It should be very clear to you how a thoughtful article on the dangers of whitewashing sports stars/politicians/etc after death is dangerous would be different than a lazy retweet of an article from another outlet written years ago by another person that is now out of date while the bodies are still smoldering.

Langsdestiny · 30/01/2020 07:51

There are other people in this mess you know. If I was the victim seeing that article might have provided me with a crumb of comfort.

MangoFeverDream · 30/01/2020 08:19

If I was the victim seeing that article might have provided me with a crumb of comfort

But you aren’t the victim. In fact, we have no idea how she feels because no one has bothered to write that article yet. But that story would be a hell of a lot better than what happened here.

Langsdestiny · 30/01/2020 09:23

There is room for all sorts of different stories about his life, this was one of them.

quickkimchi · 30/01/2020 09:29

I'm really pleased to read that Ms Sonmez has been cleared of violating the WaPo sm policy and reinstated after more than 300 colleagues voiced their support.

She has stated that she didn't think the article she linked to needed further comment; the lack of comment was deliberate and not an oversight. I suspect that she thought tweeting a link would make her less of a target than a comment piece but that's just my speculation.

Unfortunately for WaPo they are now the story. This has exposed how lax they were in the past when Ms Sonmez wrote about her own sexual assault. It sounds like a toxic environment for her and people like her. As a feminist and a survivor of assault I appreciate reading about the support she has received. After breakfast I'm going to send her a note of thanks and support.

I agree that she deserves an apology.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/29/washington-post-felicia-sonmez-kobe-bryant

I can't imagine why I'd return to the feminism boards again and again to defend a rapist and criticise a sexual assault survivor who has recently been the target of death and rape threats, had her home address posted online, had to flee for her own safety and been erroneously suspended from her job. Different strokes for different folks.

Mockers2020Vision · 30/01/2020 09:33

It's this social convention we have that you mustn't say bad things about people when they die, until after a decent interval.

After all the eulogies (led on BBCTV by Esther Rantzen) for Saville, perhaps this tradition needs examining.

andyoldlabour · 30/01/2020 09:41

"After all the eulogies (led on BBCTV by Esther Rantzen) for Saville, perhaps this tradition needs examining."

Well said. That IMHO is a bang on comment.

heathspeedwell · 30/01/2020 09:44

I think reading all the saccharine accounts of what a good man Kobe was will grate for any survivor of rape, or sexual abuse.

Ms Sonmez was brave to remind people about the reality.

quickkimchi · 30/01/2020 09:52

This convention may be the starting point and rationalisation for the outrage but loads of articles have mentioned the allegations against KB including the NYT obit above, and this one in WaPo: www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/27/posts-misguided-suspension-felicia-sonmez-over-kobe-bryant-tweets/ I haven't read about any of those journalists being driven out of their homes or suspended from their jobs. It reads like Ms Sonmez has been fed to the wolves - twice.

heathspeedwell · 30/01/2020 10:04

Interesting that the police reported that one of the first things KB did after being accused of rape was to ask if there was 'any way he could settle it'.