Jeff Bezos, the self-proclaimed “hands-off” owner of the Washington Post, emailed staffers this morning about a change he is applying to the paper’s opinion section that appears to align the newspaper more closely with the political right.
“I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages. We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” Bezos said.
“We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others. 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.”
Bezos’s decision to inject more regular and weighty conservative theming will also see the departure of opinions editor David Shipley, although it was immediately unclear if he was fired for resisting Bezos’s direction, or chose to resign.
Shipley had been in discussions over the content of the opinion section of the paper for several weeks, according to the New York Times. The dialogue began in January when Will Lewis, the chief executive of the Post, sent a memo to Shipley outlining Bezos’s new vision.
Shipley pushed back against the idea, arguing that restricting content in the way Bezos proposed would lose the breadth of viewpoints aired in Post opinion, the Times reported.
Shipley, who joined the Washington Post in 2022 as editorial page editor, was among the leading voices of protest when Bezos blocked the Post’s editorial board from publishing an endorsement for Kamala Harris, Donald Trump’s Democratic opponent, before last November’s presidential election.
But he defended the Post’s decision in January not to publish a satirical cartoon by Pulitzer prize-winner Ann Telnaes that depicted Bezos and other billionaire media company owners kneeling at the feet of a giant figure of Trump, offering bags of money.
Telnaes resigned, one of a growing number of departures of senior Post employees during a tumultuous time for the newspaper. It lost 250,000 subscribers after Bezos blocked the Harris endorsement, and a slew of star writers joined rival publications.
In his message on Wednesday, Bezos emphasized that he’s “for America, and proud to be so” and that he offered “David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter.
“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… I respect his decision,” he wrote.
Bezos also shared the letter to staff directly on his X page.
Bezos’s extraordinary rightward shift prompted a scathing response from the paper’s legendary former editor Marty Baron. Baron called the billionaire’s intervention “craven” in an interview by the online outlet Zeteo.
“He’s basically fearful of Trump. He has decided that, as timid and tepid as the editorials have been, they’ve been too tough on Trump,” Baron said.
He later told the Guardian via email on Wednesday: “What Bezos is doing today runs counter to what he said, and actually practiced, during my tenure at The Post. I have always been grateful for how he stood up for The Post and an independent press against Trump’s constant threats to his business interest. Now I couldn’t be more sad and disgusted.”
“Bezos argues for personal liberties. But his news organization now will forbid views other than his own in its opinion section,” Baron continued, noting that only a few weeks ago, the Post described itself in an internal mission statement as intended for “all of America”.
“Now, its opinion pages will be open to only some of America, those who think exactly as he does.”
Baron, who was the top editor of the Post from 2012 until he retired in 2021, added: “At a time when we’re talking about freedom and democracy, he is saying there will not be freedom and liberty on our own pages.”
At the time Baron made those comments the Post was still being published with the slogan: “Freedom dies in darkness.”
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In the aftermath of Bezos’s email, Jeff Stein, an economics reporter for the Washington Post, spoke out about the billionaire’s edict.
“Massive encroachment by Bezos into The Washington Post’s opinion section – makes clear dissenting views will not be published,” he wrote on X and Bluesky.
“I still have not felt encroachment on my journalism on the news side, but if Bezos tries interfering with the news side I will be quitting immediately and letting you know.”
Post senior video producer Dave Jorgenson said he supported Stein’s position in two posts to Bluesky. In the first, he said he was using his “personal liberties” to repost an earlier video he made about “why some billionaires are going soft on Trump”.
In the second, he wrote: “Echoing Jeff (Stein), if Bezos interferes with my work on the news side – I’m out.”
The executive editor of the Post, Matt Murray, tried to assuage jitters via a newsroom memo saying changes affected opinion alone and “the independent and unbiased work of The Post’s newsroom remains unchanged.”
But Cameron Barr, a former staff senior managing editor at the Post and currently working on contract there, wrote on Linkedin that he was ending his professional career with the outlet forthwith because the Post’s new marching order from Bezos “represents an unacceptable erosion of its commitment to publishing a healthy diversity of opinion and argument.”
The decision by Bezos, the founder of Amazon and owner of the Post since 2013, came amid other large media organizations apparently leaning into the second Trump presidency.
Cuts at MSNBC this week included the cancelation of ReidOut, longtime host Joy Reid’s popular political show that has been constantly critical of Trump and his policies; and laying off most of the employees who produced Rachel Maddow’s show after she criticized the network for canceling the programs of non-white anchors.
Facebook owner Meta and ABC News have paid Trump millions in separate settlements for defamation cases, and the president is currently pursuing a $10bn lawsuit against CBS for the alleged deceptive editing of an interview with Kamala Harris on its 60 Minutes show.
The White House, meanwhile, has been accused of interfering with the freedom of the press by announcing that it will decide which reporters and media outlets will be allowed close access to Trump. The press pool has previously been chosen by the independent White House Correspondents’ Association.
Margaret Sullivan and Ed Pilkington contributed reporting
