The billionaire owner of The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, narrowed the topics covered by its opinion section Wednesday to defending personal liberties and the free market, a pivot away from its traditional broad focus and prompting the news outlet’s opinion editor to resign.
Bezos, who also is the founder and largest individual shareholder of Amazon, said on X that “viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
The move was received by some as an indication that Bezos is making decisions for the storied news outlet with an eye toward avoiding retaliation by President Donald Trump. Bezos, though, cast the change as a modernization from the days when newspapers offered opinions on a broad range of topics. Now, he said, “the internet does that job.”
“We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” Bezos wrote in his post, adding that the new topics “are right for America. I also believe that these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion." Opinions editor David Shipley resigned rather than lead the shift, Bezos said.
“I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t `hell yes,' then it had to be `no.' After careful consideration, David decided to step away,” Bezos wrote.
The pivot echoes the Wall Street Journal's editorial page banner: “free markets, free people.”
Many changes have come to the Post of late
The move Wednesday was the latest in a series of Bezos' changes to the legacy news outlet, an award-winning organization that broke the Watergate scandal and whose motto is, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
Weeks before the November election, Bezos announced that the Post would not endorse a presidential candidate, sparking a wave of resignations and thousands of subscription cancellations. The Post’s editorial staff had been prepared to endorse Democrat Kamala Harris before publisher Will Lewis wrote instead that it would be better for readers to make up their own minds. Bezos defended the decision by saying in “a note from our owner” that editorial endorsements create a perception of bias at a time many Americans don’t believe the media, and do nothing to tip the scales of an election.
In January, cartoonist Ann Telnaes quit after an editor rejected her sketch of Bezos and other media executives bowing before Trump — after The Washington Post editor was seen with other executives at Trump’s Florida club Mar-a-Lago.
Last June, Sally Buzbee resigned as executive editor rather than lead a new division as part of a plan to split the newsroom into three separate divisions. The hastily announced restructuring was aimed stopping an exodus of readers in recent years. The new plan included a new division devoted to attracting consumers through innovative uses of social media, video, artificial intelligence and sales.
The reaction came quickly
Some of Trump's top allies tweeted their support for Bezos' move.
“Bravo, @JeffBezos!" posted fellow billionaire Elon Musk. Added conservative commentator Charlie Kirk: “Good! The culture is changing rapidly for the better.”
Bezos' critics said it was evidence that he is moving the outlet toward Trump, his followers and the interests of billionaires.
“Bezos argues for personal liberties. But his news organization now will forbid views other than his own in its opinion section,” wrote Marty Baron, Buzbee’s predecessor at the paper, in a statement first reported by The Daily Beast. “There is no doubt in my mind that he is doing this out of fear of the consequences for his other business interests.”
“This is what Oligarch ownership of the media looks like,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., posted on X, Musk's platform "The second-richest guy in the world, Bezos, owns The Washington Post. He has now declared that the editorial page of that paper is going Trump right-wing. Surprise, Mr. Musk agrees. We must support independent media.”
Bezos bought the broadsheet and other newspapers in 2013 for $250 million in a surprise move viewed as a demonstration of how the Internet has created winners and losers and transformed the media landscape.
The narrowing of topics will be obvious. On the Post's homepage Wednesday afternoon, headlines linking to opinion material included "Your showerhead is lying to you" and “What we learned about politics by talking about ... wolves.”
Laurie Kellman, The Associated Press
