Washington (AFP) – The Washington Post will no longer run views opposed to “personal liberties and free markets” on its opinion pages, owner Jeff Bezos announced Wednesday, the billionaire’s latest intervention in the major US paper’s editorial operations.
The move, a major break from the norm at the Post and at most credible news media organizations worldwide, comes as US media face increasing threats to their freedom and accusations of bias from President Donald Trump. “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” wrote Bezos on social media platform X. “We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
Bezos said the US capital’s premier daily did not have to provide opposing views because “the internet does that job.” “If this was a regular news environment we might just raise our eyebrows at this, but this is happening at a time of unprecedented pressures for journalists working in the United States,” said Katherine Jacobsen of rights watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
In October, Bezos sparked controversy by blocking the Post’s planned endorsement of Democratic vice president Kamala Harris for the 2024 presidential election, triggering newsroom protests and subscriber cancellations. And in January, an award-winning political cartoonist for the newspaper announced her resignation after a cartoon depicting Bezos groveling before Trump was rejected. At the time, editorial page editor David Shipley defended the decision, saying it was made to avoid repeated coverage on the same topic.
On Wednesday, Bezos announced Shipley would be leaving his post because he had not signed on to the new opinion pages policy. “I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t ‘hell yes,’ then it had to be ‘no,'” said Bezos. Other Post staffers also expressed their concern. “Massive encroachment by Jeff Bezos into The Washington Post’s opinion section today — makes clear dissenting views will not be published or tolerated there,” Jeff Stein, the paper’s chief economics correspondent, wrote on X. Stein added that he had “not felt encroachment on my journalism on the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.”
Amazon owner and world’s third-richest man Bezos, along with other US tech moguls, have appeared increasingly close to Trump since his election last year. Bezos was among a group of tech billionaires who were given prime positions at Trump’s inauguration, and he visited the Republican at his Mar-a-Lago estate during the transition period.
CPJ has documented “how ownership of media companies in countries such as Hungary and Russia has really had an impact on press freedom,” the committee’s Jacobsen cautioned. “We would do well in the US to look at countries like that to see what happens when perhaps too much interest is given to owner interest versus serving the public good.”
© 2024 AFP
