Jeff Bezos Announces Big Changes At Washington Post, All Of Them Bad
Opinion section set to get dumber.
Jeff Bezos announced on Wednesday that The Washington Post opinion section will basically become The Wall Street Journal but with color photos.
Bezos informed the Post staff that the opinion section would exclusively focus on “personal liberties and free markets.”
“We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others,” Bezos said. “There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.”
I love the internet. It’s where I get all my Britt Lower news, but I do miss when everyone in a community, regardless of background, received their news from the same reliable source. The Weekly World News had higher journalistic standards than a lot of the conspiracy-laden propaganda people read online.
This is not an encouraging direction for The Washington Post. I’m shocked, because wealthy men buying newspapers to advance their own agendas worked out so well in the movies.
‘Freedom’ is just another word for rich dude libertarianism
When Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013, the paper was in dire shape. His money helped turn things around, and Bezos reassured the staff that he wouldn’t interfere with editorial. This was like making a deal with the Devil with the assurance that he’d just keep your soul on a shelf somewhere and never touch it.
Bezos has now removed the paper’s editorial independence from the shelf, which he glosses over in his self-serving memo to the staff.
“I am of America and for America, and proud to be so.” (I wonder if Bezos had his own private orchestra play the Battle Hymn of the Republic as he wrote this message.) “Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.”
This all sounds like bog-standard libertarianism. Decades ago, men like Bezos might sneer at the Religious Right but nonetheless vote for Republican candidates who promised they’d keep their tax burdens low or ideally non-existent. Libertarians reject any societal obligations individuals might have as unnecessary restrictions on their freedom. They don’t care much for organized labor or basic workplace protections.
Yet, even by the 1990s “libertarians are basically Republicans” standard, an opinions section dedicated to defending “personal liberties and free markets” would still actively oppose the Trump administration.
Trump supports inflationary tariffs, and his administration directly intervenes in the markets, often to his own benefit. Trump is waging an Orwellian campaign of censorship against a free press: The White House has seized control of the press pool and will determine for itself which MAGA-hack outlets will cover presidential events. His administration has aggressively pursued a policy of trans erasure, and Russian nesting asset Tulsi Gabbard has kicked off a McCarthy-style purge of LGBTQ Americans from government.
“I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America,” Bezos told the Post staff. “I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion.”
That’s nonsense: Pro-corporate and anti-woke viewpoints are everywhere. The Biden White House regularly read Matthew Yglesias not Michael Harriot. Former Post columnist Jennifer Rubin was a Romney conservative, but she couldn’t tolerate Bezos’s open subservience to Trump. So, yes, I’m skeptical that the Washington Post, under Bezos’s stewardship, will seriously defend personal liberties against Trump.
Not selling out, just cashing in
Bezos claims that he offered current opinions editor “David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter,” and presumably after rolling his eyes at the trite phrasing, Shipley declined.
Of course, the offer wasn’t exactly made in the best faith. Bezos would only accept as an answer “hell yes” or “no,” which suggests that he wasn’t interested in any reasonable or constructive pushback during the transition.
Shipley told the opinion page staff that he was leaving “after reflection on how I can best move forward in the profession I love.”
The Post’s opinion page didn’t exactly lead the resistance even before this upcoming change. It’s praised Trump’s slightly less insane decisions, a sort of cookie for restrained fascism. Then there was that recent puff piece about Senators John Fetterman and David McCormick, which swooned over how well these two white straight guys managed to get along despite their differences, which we’ll assume actually exist. McCormick, who’s proven a reliable vote for every awful, unqualified Trump nominee, couldn’t have paid for better PR.
Journalist Anand Giridharadas framed this new direction as “Bezos capitulates,” and many other critics have argued that Bezos is trying to remain in Trump’s good graces. Bezos has been unfavorably compared to former Post owner/publisher Katherine Graham, who presided over the paper when it broke the Watergate story. However, it’s not just that Graham possessed greater moral courage than Bezos. Graham was an actual journalist. Bezos is a plutocrat. The Amazon founder acquired the Post to further his own interests, which just so happen to align with Donald Trump and Elon Musk. There’s a total of 2,781 billionaires in the entire world (just 813 in the U.S.). You’d expect they’d feel a kinship.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries recently groveled at the feet of some Silicon Valley bigwigs, hoping to “mend fences” and reassure the tech world that Democrats are suitably pro-business. Liberals have long hoped that Trump’s inherent instability would frighten the wealthiest Americans and send them flocking to the “sane” party, leaving the GOP with the Marjorie Taylor Greene electorate. The flaw in this thinking is that the wealthy don’t mind aligning themselves with far-right extremists. They’re also confident that there’s further profit in autocracy. We probably shouldn’t expect billionaires to defend the vulnerable — although Charles Foster Kane at least gave it a shot before failing to live up to his ideals. Bezos has always treated the Post as just another personal asset.
People started cancelling their Post subscriptions en masse after Bezos killed the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, which would’ve actually promoted personal liberties and the free market. This latest change will likely inspire more cancellations, but Bezos didn’t buy the paper to make money — not directly, at least.
The Washington Post adopted the slogan “Democracy Dies In Darkness” after Trump was first elected. It turns out that democracy also dies in broad daylight when billionaires control major media outlets.
Cancelling our Prime subscriptions will make a bigger impression
When Bezos says "personal liberties," he means his own personal liberty and the hell with the rest of us. When he says "free markets," he means that he can do whatever he wants without consequences, no matter the damage to others.