The tragic decline of the Washington Post, thanks to Jeff Bezos
Full (blistering) statement here from Marty Baron, former top editor; and one from a ranking editor, Cameron Barr, as he severs his Post ties
When my editor at the GuardianUS asked me Wednesday morning to write a deadline column on the latest appalling move by Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, I immediately reached out for comment to former Post editor Marty Baron.
Bezos, as you may know, decided this week to gut the paper’s opinion section by declaring that only views consistent with “personal liberties and free markets” would be published there. Views opposing these could find a home elsewhere. This followed his cozying up to Donald Trump in a variety of other ways, from killing an endorsement editorial of Kamala Harris just before the election to having Amazon give $1 million to the inauguration. Here’s a gift link to the New York Times coverage of Bezos’s move.
The Post’s top opinion editor, David Shipley, resigned.
I wrote the Guardian column and you can read it here. But I thought you should see Marty’s full response since I was able to quote it only in part. Baron’s 2023 memoir, “Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos and The Washington Post,” tells of a quite different Bezos, one who stood up to Trump’s intimidation. No more. Now Bezos is all about his own commercial interests and he’s selling out the paper he bought in 2013.
Read it and weep. This really is tragic because — especially at this moment — we need stalwart, courageous ownership of our most dominant news organizations. I’m not canceling my Post subscription because the news coverage remains strong, and I want to support my former colleagues there. (I was the Post’s media columnist, hired by Baron, from 2016 to 2022.)
Recall that Baron not only led The Post to great and award-winning journalism, but previously was the editor of the Boston Globe as it exposed the sexual-abuse scandal in the Catholic Church; he was portrayed by Liev Schreiber in the Oscar-winning movie “Spotlight.”
Baron wrote:
Bezos argues for personal liberties. But his news organization now will forbid views other than his own in its opinion section. It was only weeks ago that The Post described itself as providing coverage for “all of America.” Now its opinion pages will be open to only some of America, those who think exactly as he does.
Bezos himself has done personal liberties a disservice by cravenly yielding to a president who shows no respect for liberty — one who aims to use the power of government to bully, threaten, punish and crush anyone who is not in his camp, especially the press. There is no doubt in my mind that he is doing this out of fear of the consequences for his other business interests, Amazon (the source of his wealth) and Blue Origin (which represents his lifelong passion for space exploration). He has prioritized those commercial interests over The Post, and he is betraying The Post’s longstanding principles to do so.
So Amazon gives to Trump’s inauguration and pays Melania Trump an exorbitant sum for rights to her so-called documentary. He personally kills a presidential endorsement for Trump’s opponent, and he appears on the dais during the inauguration.
In arguing against a presidential endorsement, Bezos said, "We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.” Appearing at the inauguration did not look like “working harder” to increase credibility. It undermined The Post’s credibility. And it didn’t look like “working harder” to establish The Post’s independence. It was a sign of dependence, not independence — the dependence of Amazon, Blue Origin and Bezos on Donald Trump.
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 interests. Now I couldn’t be more sad and disgusted.
He added to his statement in a later email to me, this one differentiating between the the paper’s opinion department and its newsroom, which delivers the hard-news coverage. News and opinion are two distinct departments at The Post, and many other news organizations.
Baron’s addendum here:
Notwithstanding the damage inflicted on The Post from the top, its newsroom has continued to deliver truly admirable, revelatory coverage of the Trump administration. I’ve seen zero evidence of interference by Bezos in the newsroom, only a lot of hard work by the news staff and a strong and fearless determination to tell the public what it deserves to know.
Here is a statement published Wednesday on LinkedIn from a longtime, high-ranking Post editor, Cameron Barr, who was Baron’s deputy and has continued to work on projects there in recent years.
Readers, tell me your thoughts. There is no paywall; comment at will.
And thank you for all the support you’ve shown me, which I know is a way of showing your support for journalism’s role in our teetering democracy.
There is some irony here that Bezos is missing.
1. Fascism, by definition, restricts personal liberties.
2. Oligarchy, by definition, undermines free markets.
Using objectivity (as opposed to mealy-mouthed "neutrality") to point out that fascism and oligarchy are direct threats to competitive capitalism and equal opportunity in this country is an important topic, for both News and Opinion.
So Bezos should have no problem with the current opinion section articles in the Post.
Unless, of course, he has his own selective ideas of what "personal liberties" and "free markets" really mean in the America he grew up in.
Former newspaper editor here. I worked in community journalism for 30 years. The little papers where I worked are not household names. But we had integrity. Nobody ever bought my edit page.
I wish I could end my subscription over this, but I already ended it when Bezos killed the Harris endorsement.