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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, 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.
“Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force,” Shipley said at the time, adding that he had spoken with Telnaes and asked her to reconsider leaving.
“My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column – this one a satire – for publication.”
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. This is a significant shift, it won’t be easy, and it will require 100% commitment – I respect his decision,” he wrote, adding that the paper is now “searching for a new opinion editor to own this new direction”.
Bezos also shared the letter to staff directly on his X page.
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.”
More details soon …
