Politics
Musk
praises Bezos’ new rules for Washington Post opinion pages as top editor
resigns
Published
Wed, Feb 26 202512:39 PM ESTUpdated Wed, Feb 26 20252:34 PM EST
Kevin
Breuninger
@KevinWilliamB
Lillian
Rizzo
@Lilliannnn
Amazon
founder Jeff Bezos said that the Washington Post’s opinion pages would now be
dedicated to supporting “personal liberties and free markets,” in a move that
will likely spark fresh accusations that he’s trying to curry favor with
President Donald Trump.
Viewpoints
opposing those two “pillars” will be “left to be published by others,” Bezos
told staffers at the paper he owns, drawing praise from some Trump advisors
like Elon Musk.
Bezos
also said that editorial page editor David Shipley, who had held the job for
over two years, decided to resign.
Jeff Bezos,
the Amazon founder and
owner of the Washington Post, said Wednesday that his newspaper’s opinion pages
would now be dedicated to supporting “personal liberties and free markets,” and
that the organization would not publish opposing views.
“We’ll cover
other topics too of course,” Bezos said in an email to Post staffers that he
posted on X. “But viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be
published by others.”
While the
move garnered praise from some in President Donald Trump’s administration, such
as Elon Musk, it was panned by some current and former Post staffers, including
former editor Marty Baron, who said he was “disgusted.”
Bezos said
that editorial page editor David Shipley, who had held the job for over two
years, decided to resign rather than lead the opinion section under the new
policy.
“I suggested
to him that if the answer wasn’t ‘hell yes,’ then it had to be ‘no,’” Bezos
said of Shipley, adding, “I respect his decision.”
The Post
will be “searching for a new Opinion Editor to own this new direction,” Bezos
said.
He asserted
that while a major newspaper might once have considered it a service to offer
its readers “a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views,”
that is no longer the case.
“Today, the
internet does that job,” Bezos wrote.
“I’m
confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America,” he
added. “I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market
of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.”
Representatives
for Bezos and the Post, as well as Shipley, did not immediately return CNBC’s
requests for additional comment.
By erecting
new parameters around what opinions the Post can print, Bezos will likely draw
fresh accusations that he is seeking to curry favor with Trump, who has long
attacked the paper as “Fake News.”
Less than
two weeks before the 2024 presidential election between the Republican Trump
and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, the Post announced that it would not
endorse either candidate, breaking with decades of recent precedent.
The Post in
a news article at the time reported that the paper’s editorial staff had
planned to endorse Harris, and that Bezos himself made the decision to end the
tradition.
Four days
later, the newspaper reported that at least 250,000 of its readers had canceled
their subscriptions following the policy shift.
After Trump
won the election, Bezos’ Amazon joined with numerous other tech giants in
donating hefty sums to the then-president-elect’s inaugural fund. While Bezos
stepped down as CEO of the company in 2021, he still serves as its executive
chairman.
Musk, who
leads Trump’s government-slashing task force known as DOGE, praised Bezos for
implementing the editorial change.
Multiple
staffers have recently quit the Post in protest. Cartoonist Ann Telnaes left
the paper in early January, after accusing her bosses of killing her drawing of
businessmen — including one resembling Bezos — genuflecting at an altar of
Trump. When she resigned the same month, columnist Jennifer Rubin accused Bezos
and other rich media moguls of enabling Trump and betraying their audiences’
loyalty.
In reacting
to Bezos’ announcement Wednesday morning, some have noted that Amazon is
currently involved in an antitrust lawsuit brought by the U.S. Federal Trade
Commission.
Prior to
Trump’s inauguration, Puck News first reported that Amazon would pay $40
million to license a documentary about first lady Melania Trump. The Wall
Street Journal reported this month that Melania will pocket more than 70% of
that total.
It is not
unprecedented for a newspaper’s owner to involve themselves in editorial
decisions, New York University journalism professor Adam Penenberg told CNBC.
He pointed to the New York Post’s conservative shift after Rupert Murdoch’s
takeover in 1976, and Sheldon Adelson’s push to make the Las Vegas
Review-Journal more pro-business.
But
Penenberg noted that Bezos’ order for his paper’s editorial pages to comply
with specific ideological views sets him apart.
The
announcement spurred a range of initial responses from reporters at the Post —
some of whom said the news department will not be affected.
“As I’ve
stated before: Nothing changes,” wrote Dan Lamothe, who covers military
affairs, on X later Wednesday morning. “We ask hard questions and hold those in
power to account. That’s the job, whether those in power like it or not.”
But chief
economic reporter Jeff Stein called Bezos’ decision a “massive encroachment”
into the paper’s opinion section that “makes clear dissenting views will not be
published or tolerated.”
“I still
have not felt encroachment on my journalism on the news side of coverage, but
if Bezos tries interfering with the news side I will be quitting immediately
and letting you know,” Stein wrote on X.
Baron, who
retired as editor of the Post in 2021 after eight years in the role, slammed
Bezos in a scathing statement to the Daily Beast later Wednesday.
“What Bezos
is doing today runs counter to what he said, and actually practiced, during my
tenure at The Post,” Baron said. “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 interests. Now I couldn’t be more sad and disgusted.”
Philip Bump,
a current Post opinion columnist, wrote on Bluesky: “What the actual f---.”
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