Connect the Dots 101

Bezos has announced a repulsive new rule on which opinions are allowed at the Post—and which aren’t.

Billionaire Trump surrogate and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos announced on Wednesday that the Post’s opinion section will only accept some opinions.

On Wednesday, Bezos posted on X what he told the Post opinion desk staff.

“We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others,” Bezos wrote on X. “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 went on to note that opinion editor David Shipley left the paper in light of the new changes.

This announcement is the culmination of Bezos’s blatant attempts to align the Post with the political party currently in power. CEO and publisher Will Lewis led a controversial revamp of the newsroom, after which the paper decided to conveniently endpresidential endorsements last year. On top of that, there was the paper’s painfully ironic slogan change, Bezos’s front-row appearanceat Trump’s inauguration, and the Post’s suppression of an advertisement critical of Elon Musk just last week. Now there’s a public pledge in favor of capitalism and against whatever Bezos thinks “personal liberties” are (likely another thinly veiled shot at “wokeness” and “DEI”).

This decision has been met with glee from conservatives and shock and disgust from just about everyone else.

“What the actual fuck,” Post columnist Phil Bump wrote.

“Massive encroachment by Jeff Bezos into The Washington Post’s opinion section today—makes clear dissenting views will not be published or tolerated there,”  said Jeff Stein, The Washington Post’s head economics reporter. “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.”

“This guy actually writes ‘freedom is ethical—it minimizes coercion’ in a letter about how he’s now dictating what staff can write about,” former Post staffer Christopher Ingraham wrote on X.

“Democracy dies in exchange for billionaire kickbacks” Indivisible Guide’s Leah Greenberg wrote on X. “A disgusting, gutless decision from Bezos that will go down in the history books as a textbook example of anticipatory obedience.”

The impact of this decision on the Post’s opinion staff and subscribers is yet to be seen.

https://newrepublic.com/post/192012/jeff-bezos-change-washington-post-opinion