A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter prohibited from covering the city’s Black Lives Matter protests because of a tweet sued the paper on Tuesday.
The suit says Johnson’s editors told her she could not pursue planned stories on jailed protesters or social-media efforts to raise bail funds because a May 31 tweet she sent about the different treatment black and white people get for doing property damage was an unacceptable public display of bias.
“The Johnson Tweet was intended to — and did — mock, ridicule and protest discrimination against African Americans by society in general and by whites who equate property damage with human life,” the suit says.
Johnson’s fellow reporters, her union and the city’s mayor rallied around her when they got word of the paper’s move, with dozens of them sending identical tweets in support.
The president of Johnson’s Guild President Michael A. Fuoco, who is also a Post-Gazette reporter, said that guild leaders were “appalled” by the move, and the paper’s editors have not yielded at all in discussions about Johnson’s status.
