Renée Graham quits Globe editorial board over Charlie Kirk editorial but will remain as a columnist

Boston Globe columnist Renée Graham has quit the paper’s editorial board in protest over last week’s editorial (sub. req.) praising the slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s commitment to free speech — an editorial that was widely derided by critics who objected to Kirk’s often hateful rhetoric. Graham will remain as a columnist and will continue to write her Globe newsletter, Outtakes.

Graham confirmed those developments in an email exchange but would not offer any further comment.

A Globe spokesperson said of Graham’s decision: “We are grateful to Renée Graham for her valuable contributions to our team and to the editorial board. We respect her decision to resign from the board and are pleased that she will continue in her role as a Globe Opinion associate editor, columnist, and newsletter writer.”

Sign up for free email delivery of Media Nation. You can also become a supporter for just $6 a month and receive a weekly newsletter with exclusive content.

Kirk was murdered during an appearance at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10. It’s been the top story in the news ever since given the public nature of his death (including a graphic video), the devotion of his millions of followers (Donald Trump and JD Vance among them), and his comments targeting Black women, members of the LGBTQ community, immigrants and others.

And as I wrote on Monday, Kirk’s dubious legacy included not just words but deeds: He was the founder of Professor Watchlist, which targeted people in academia for left-wing rhetoric, resulting in doxxing and death threats. The American Association of University Professors reported in 2017 that there had been more than 100 incidents of “targeted harassment” arising from the Professor Watchlist. In other words, Kirk was hardly an exemplar of free speech. Yet the Globe editorial included this tone-deaf passage:

We all must accept that disagreements — even about fundamental moral and political questions — are normal, especially in a country as large and diverse as the United States. The solution is to do what Kirk did and air those differences. We don’t mean to sugarcoat the way he carried out his activism; Kirk could be bigoted, crude, and insulting. But the point is, his weapon of choice was always words.

The Globe’s editorial, published online Sept. 12, was originally headlined “We need more Charlie Kirks.” It was later changed to “Charlie Kirk murder: America needs dialogue, not bullets,” and appeared in print on Sept. 12 under the headline “An attack on democracy.”

The editorial brought widespread criticism, some of which landed in my inbox. Mike Deehan reports at Axios Boston that some readers threatened to cancel their subscriptions, and I heard the same thing.

In a statement provided to me this morning, editorial-page editor Jim Dao said: “We stand behind the message of the editorial which is a reasoned response to the strong emotions surrounding Kirk’s killing. We respect the thoughts of readers who object to the editorial and encourage them to express their views by submitting letters to the editor.” (The Globe ran a column of critical letters Sept. 15.) Additionally, Dao told Deehan that digital headlines often change, “but in this instance, the decision to change the editorial’s digital headline was in direct response to reader feedback.”

Ellen Clegg, my What Works collaborator, writes for Poynter Online that the time has come to get rid of the traditional unsigned newspaper editorial.

Graham, an unstinting liberal, is a vital part of the Globe, and it’s unfortunate that her voice will no longer be heard at editorial-board meetings, though I’m glad that she’ll continue to write for the opinion section. Her most recent column (sub. req.), published on Wednesday, was about an appearance by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in Medford to talk about her her memoir, “Lovely One.”

Graham was also a major contributor to “Nightmare in Mission Hill,” a 2023 special project by the Globe looking into the notorious 1989 murder of a pregnant woman, Carol DiMaiti Stuart, at the hands of her husband, Charles Stuart. Both Stuarts were white. The search for a Black suspect turned the city upside down and led to a reckoning with the city’s racism — including serious mistakes by the media, including the Globe, which the series explores.

Graham’s decision to quit the editorial board calls to mind a similar move by Jonathan Capehart. In December 2022, Capehart stepped down from The Washington Post’s editorial board after a dispute over an editorial (sub. req.) regarding the U.S. Senate race in Georgia between incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker, a story that was broken by Axios media reporter Sara Fischer. (Warnock won.)

Although Fischer did not reveal the nature of the dispute, Ken Meyer of Mediaite wrote that “the Post editorial included a line noting ‘turnout remained high’ in the 2022 midterms in Georgia ‘despite hyperbolic warnings by President Biden and other Democrats that updated voting rules amounted to Jim Crow 2.0.’” Meyer added: “Capehart himself had disputed that very claim in the editorial a month before in November, referring to the rules as ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ in his own piece (sub. req.).”

Capehart remained as a Post columnist, associate editor and podcaster until earlier this year, when he took a buyout offered after owner Jeff Bezos’ pronouncement that the Post opinion section would henceforth devote itself to promoting “personal liberties and free markets.” Capehart continues to host a weekend show on MSNBC and is a contributing commentator to the “PBS NewsHour.”

Like Capehart, Renée Graham is Black and gay, bringing two important perspectives to how the paper approaches its editorial responsibilities. The Globe’s editorial board, as with other large newspapers, comprises members of the opinion staff who hash out essays to be written without a byline in order to express the institutional voice of the paper. It’s my understanding that the Globe’s board continues to have Black representation.

Graham’s move comes at a moment of rising repression. The Post fired longtime columnist Karen Attiah — its last remaining full-time Black columnist — after she wrote a series of Bluesky posts in which she condemned gun violence following Charlie Kirk’s murder. That thread included just one reference to Kirk, quoting his own words.

On Wednesday, late-night comedy host Jimmy Kimmel’s program was suspended by ABC (we’ll see if he ever comes back) after a monologue he delivered Monday. Although it’s not entirely clear what specific words got Kimmel in trouble, his monologue mocked Trump more harshly than it did Kirk.

Poynter Online media columnist Tom Jones called the move “stunning and disturbing,” while media reporter Oliver Darcy noted (sub. req.) that ABC and its corporate owner, Disney, acted as they did after two developments: FCC chair Brendan Carr threatened the network, and Nexstar, which owns multiple ABC affiliates, said it would pull Kimmel’s show if action were not taken. Nexstar is seeking to merge with yet another media conglomerate, Tegna, a deal that requires — you guessed it — FCC approval. Here’s how Carr responded on Twitter when CNN media reporter Brian Stelter asked him for comment:

Earlier this year CBS announced it would cancel Stephen Colbert’s late-night program. Colbert, too, is a frequent Trump critic, though in his case the network cited the high cost of the program and put off the actual cancellation until next May.

It is incredibly worrisome that Kirk’s murder — a tragedy for his family and friends as well as a grotesque commentary on our current political environment — is now being used to justify a wave of repression, driven by the grievance-drenched right despite studies showing that most political violence actually comes from the right, as researchers Art Jipson and Paul J. Becker write for The Conversation.

When you look at the national media landscape, it is shocking how much of it has fallen into the hands of MAGA allies, from Twitter and (possibly) TikTok to CBS News and, of course, Fox News. Others, such as Disney, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, have shown that they’re either aligned with Trump or wary of provoking his childish but dangerous wrath.

There aren’t many important large, mainstream independent media voices that are still in operation. The New York Times is one. The Boston Globe is another. Neither gets it right all the time, of course, and it’s understandable that everyone’s spidey sense starts tingling when they blow it.

So let’s hope the Globe’s Charlie Kirk editorial was one of those anomalies stemming from an understandable instinct to pull back on criticism of Kirk in the immediate aftermath of his shocking murder. We can simultaneously be horrified by what happened to him while still undertaking a clear-eyed examination of his legacy.