I don't care about the Washington Post's editorial direction all that much, but yesterday Jeff Bezos announced a big change:
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. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.
First question: By "opinion pages" does Bezos mean only the editorial page? That is, the unsigned editorials that officially represent the Post's view and aren't much read these days? Or does he mean all the editorial pages, including op-eds?
Second question: I assume Bezos is talking only about Post editorials. There are not actually very many of these, and writing every day about the same two topics sounds tedious, regardless of how you feel about the subject matter.
But Bezos owns the paper and can do what he wants. In fact, the one place where an owner traditionally has control over things is the newspaper's broad editorial line. So there may be reason to disagree with Bezos but no real reason to be outraged. Especially since he explicitly says opposing views are fine but will be written by others, not the Post editorial board.
Overall, I just wonder if I have this right. Is Bezos merely exercising a common—if contentious—leadership right? Or is there more to it?
Stopped reading the WaPo last year when Bezos quashed the Harris endorsement. So far, I see nothing to regret about that decision. The only useful parts of the WaPo I can find at the Boston Globe, which isn't trying to be the billionaire's Pravda.
10+ As did I. So sad as I had enjoyed it for years. Did the same to NYT as it was slip sliding to the right. Good media is difficult to find.
The Post still has a number of worthwhile op-ed writers, though some have quit. It has also always had a stable of right-wing wackos. It presumably still has reporters doing original work that forms the basis for a lot of other media reports and opinions. Even the editorials are still not slavishly pro-Trump by any means. We'll see what happens in the near future.
The Guardian is a good alternative to the major US papers. It does not require paid subscription.
It’s not paywalled, but please donate some of the money you save dropping the sanewashing NYT and WaPo.
I think the old American model of striving-for-objectivity journalism was defensible, until it weakened into bothsiderism. I think the UK model of explicitly partisan media is also valid, except that mainstream news operations are money-losers, so only the rightwing oligarchs can afford to keep them operating.
I still subscribe, mostly for Philip Bump and Aaron Blake.
I like those guys too, but the real reason we need the WaPo is for their deep knowledge of how DC works, namely the reporting. And, like Kevin, I can't parse yet what Bezos' move means for the reporting. (presumably more than "personal liberties and free markets").
I think the context really matters here: his past actions, and those of his fellow techbro oligarchs, suggest interpreting this in the most malicious way possible is probably correct. None of these guys merit any benefit of the doubt whatsoever at this point, as they’re waging a semi-declared war on the US.
+1
I think "published by others" means just that. He's going to drop several liberal columnists, hire a bunch of right-wing ones, and if you want to read liberal opinions, you can go to The Guardian.
Yep, that's how I read it as well.
I read it that way as well.
Agreed -- I think Kevin is misreading it.
Bezos (unlike Trump or Musk) probably uses words according to what they really mean. "Opinion pages" (plural) does not mean just the editorial page, but also the individual opinion writers -- that's why the whole section is referred to as the "op-eds". And as the publisher, Bezos "publishes" the paper -- the individual writers don't -- so "published by others" means "not in my paper."
Yes, I'm sure this applies to the whole op-ed page. He's not just talking about the lead editorials, which have been wishy-washy pro-free market slop for a long time now.
I took Bezos at his word when he said he would not interfere with the editorial content of the paper. Trump, however, was for a long time at war with Bezos since he assumed everything negative about him in WaPo must have come directly from Bezos. After all, if Trump owned a newspaper of course he would dictate its content.
So now Bezos has proven Trump right. Although I weep for the loss of my hometown paper, I can never forgive Bezos for this and can never read WaPo again as long as he is the owner.
Agree with others here-- "opinion pages" plural, meaning traditional editorial page and op-ed page (ie, David Shipley's title and bailiwick).
I read Bezos's announcement as proposing to be a kind of MAGA-fied low-rent Wall Street Journal, or maybe a high-rent New York Post. How far that will affect news coverage remains to be seen, I suppose, but his description of the project indicates to me that it will go pretty far.
There's no need to extend Bezos the benefit of any doubt at this point. He's declared his allegiance several times now-- spiking the endorsement, killing the motto, having Shipley deep-six the Telnaes cartoon, and finally at the inauguration. He is where he wants to be, and where he wants to be seen.
Looks like the Supreme Court thinks it's fine for the US to renege on its contractual obligations.
Will the Post write about that?
I've begun thinking of the once Supreme Court as the "SCROTUS" -- Supreme Court, Republican, of the United States. Yes, looking forward to seeing how Bezos justifies THAT.
Its been Scrotus since 1972 and only 1 of FDR's appointments were still on the court. (The supreme court has had at least 5 republicans continuously on the courts now for 53 straight years. And it looks like at lest another 25 on the horizon.
Or Supreme Court, Republican, Of The United MAGA.
So two Justices together (Coke Can and The Massachussetts Firebrand) are Supreme Court Republican Outright Trumpian Anarchists?
There's no reason to be outraged that the Post is declaring it will turn hard to the right? Really?
You say "paper owners have this right." I say "the formal right to exercise power does not self-justify all exercises of this power."
More to the point, context matters. We have vandals in government going nuts and breaking laws, Bezos is tight with the vandal-in-chief, and THAT is the context of "hey, I'm muzzling the editorial pages" is happening in. I don't know why you'd jump through hoops to manufacture a charitable reading here.
Of course the owner of a paper has the right to make it anything he wants.
We are just observing that he seems intent on turning a respectable news outlet into a high toned Fox News.
The idea that there is a firewall between news and opinion isn't supported by any evidence.
+10.
Yeah, sure, I'm just certain that Bezos is speaking from long-standing, deep conviction, in accord with his initial in buying and keeping alive a more liberal paper in the first place. And of course Bezos means only the editorials, or at least only the opinion pages, because of his deep moral convictions.
In other words, come on, Kevin! Oh, and he has every right to tun his paper. But does the president of the United States have every right to intimidate and shape the press?
You can safely bet that "personal liberty" doesn't apply to female-type persons, nor to persons who decide they want to be some other "type." And "free markets" don't mean people are allowed to boycott vendors they consider, well, "deplorable" to coin a phrase.
Exactly. Personal Liberty applies only to white, heterosexual men.
On the other hand, free markets means no one has to shop at Amazon or Whole Foods, or use the credit card. I’m only keeping Prime until the next season of Wheel of Time has been viewed.
You can bet Bezos does not believe in free markets. He means no government regulation of businesses. Free markets by definition are markets with robust competition which requires eliminating uncompetitive practices like monopolies, oligopolies, price gouging, price fixing, etc. That requires government regulations which outlaw anti-competitive practices as well as strong oversight and enforcement of those regulations.
Free markets also require that consumers have all the information they need to make informed choices. Government is also key there to require transparency (food labels for example), prevent deceptive claims, hidden fees, etc.
Who'da thunk. You're right, of course, and in spades.
Say WaPo hires a young conservative columnists. They are fantastic and develop a name for themselves among centrists and even some deep right folks. After many years of research and opinion writing, they start moving left on certain conservative tenets. Can they write their mind? Or is that the end of their job? I understand owners have discretion but should they outright drop particular controversial points of view? Seems like a bizarre way to run an opinion section. Just increases and adds more bubbles and silos to the news media landscape.
Technoliberalism
As soon someone reaches for, "well, that's legal", the conversation should be over.
Of course he can do it, you're arguing with a strawman, that wasn't the question.
What is happening is that Jeff is clearly signaling being cool with the MAGA gang. Burning down the Post is his earnest money. He's late to the party, feeling insecure, and proving himself.
Wait 'til he gets to the Trumpy ritual humiliations. Despite the horror of what's going on I will probably enjoy watching those too much - Bezos is such a pathetic little shitweasel.
A lot of it smacks of just trying to get back at his ex for using her stupendous divorce settlement to support progressive causes. He's a small, small man and his one prestige property -- the Post -- will soon be reduced to second-class parrot cage liner, if it isn't already.
That'll show Mackenzie.
I suspect you are right, and it's another example of how the petty grievances and resentments of a clique of super-rich man-boys is destroying our reason-based democracy and most likely the future of human civilization.
+1
10+ Love it. She just showed who she really is and we suspected who Jeff was all along.
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: I got mine, and screw everybody else...
Normally those terms would lead me to believe that the WaPo will now be going after the Trump administration with hammer and tongs for things like tariffs and the flaming corruption taking over the DOJ and FBI, as well as its well-publicized attacks on sexual minorities.
But of course what Bezos means by "personal liberty" is probably along the lines of supporting parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids, and "economic freedom" is freedom for oligarchs like himself to be free from taxes and pesky regulators like the CFPB.
Interesting-- even as I read Bezos's statement for the first time I was interpreting "personal liberty" and "economic freedom" as in your second graf. IOW I was already translating key phrases of Old WSJ Hayek-speak into New BillionaireBro Absolutism-speak without even noticing I was doing it. Amazing how quickly changing contexts affect language.
Kevin, you left out that Opinions Editor David Shipley resigned as a result of this decision. I'm sure when newspaper owners make normal and generally expected decisions about their papers the normal and generally expected response is for employees to resign.
Note also that reliable columnist Philip Bump, who's done wonderful coverage of Donald Trump since he first started running for president, got moved without explanation from news/analysis to Op Ed after Trump's re-election. Will he, as a Post employee, now be subject to this new rule and therefore dropped from the paper entirely? Wouldn't you expect Bezos to be "crystal clear" (as publisher/CEO William Lewis wrote) about exactly who is going to be affected by this change? Does "opinion pages" include letters to the editor, or just people on Post payroll, or (as you ask) just the Post Editorials? If you have to ask, it isn't clear.
This change was covered in the Post's "Style" section yesterday. That's way down the page online. I already canceled my subscription.
"You can get other opinions on the Internet": well, ignoring that you have to find them (using whose search engines) or have them recommended to you by an algorithm (whose), that seems to blithely equate the opinion of a qualified expert or a professional journalist with "Bigballs32" on a personal website. It also seems to suggest that the corporate owner of a newspaper should have total control over what that newspaper prints; doesn't that suggest there's also nothing wrong with Fox News? If I purchase and own a hospital, does my right of ownership mean the hospital no longer has larger responsibilities to patients which come along with being a hospital?
Like most libertarians, when Bezos writes "personal liberties" he means HIS liberties. He can prove me wrong by the Post running lots of Opinion pieces about the personal liberties of transpeople to receive medical care, or the personal liberties of asylum seekers, or the personal liberties of government employees. But I'm not holding my breath.
Yes, this is the key.
David Shipley was not the editor of only the Post's own editorials. He oversaw the opinion *section* and that is primarily all the op-eds. This is about firing the op-ed writers who aren't in line with this new vision.
Obviously Bezos can do this, but the thing I think he doesn't understand is that there are already tons of outlets for this tired libertarian line. Reason's blogs are free and not bad. Why should people pay for the Post if this is its value proposition? Bezos doesn't understand why people read the paper he bought.
".. but the thing I think he doesn't understand .."
He is trying to please Trump, rather than make money out of WP, so I don't think it is lack of understanding.
Exactly.
Also ignoring that as Mump's transformation of America proceeds, more and more of those other opinions will likely be pushed out of existence.
There is a strong pressure for people to normalize every step along the journey into crazy town. No matter how bad the direction of each small step is, it's possible to convince yourself that it's just one small step and probably not a big deal.
Bezos: "viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others."
Drum: "Especially since he explicitly says opposing views are fine but will be written by others, not the Post editorial board."
Uh, no, Kevin... he just said they'd be written by others. It's *incredibly* naïve of you to assume that Bezos won't be a full plutocrat autocrat and forbid ideas/opinions/facts he dislikes from the Post.
As cephalopod and MikeTheMathGuy point out, he said published by others; so, not published in WaPo, at all.
if you are on the wapo ed board and you write something critical of tariffs, are you opposing "free markets"?
if you are on the wapo ed board and you write something critical of EO 13899 and the the WH's fixation on viewpoint-motivated deportations, are you opposing "personal liberties"?
Based on the information at hand, I don't think any of us really know how this is going to play out. His comments were pretty cryptic and could mean any number of things.
That said, though, as a decades-long Washington Post reader, I have noticed the paper has moved considerably to the Progressive Left since 2016. I am not talking about the unsigned Staff editorials here (who reads them anyway) or about their opinion columnists (who remain across the spectrum, albeit with disproportionately few MAGAites and disproportionately more normie Liberals).
But the content of the daily news coverage has moved well to the Left. The Post's stories (most prominently feature articles) these days address issues that are of concern to the Left. Additionally, a lot of their staff write their articles in a way that makes it clear that they are looking at the topic from the perspective of the Progressive Left. I find little bits in there that throw up my "Oh, this reporter seems to have an agenda, gotta be critical" screens, a LOT more than I used to. It soaks down even to the sports pages.
The "daily news reports" have moved left because Reality has an increasingly "Liberal bias".
"I have noticed"
"normie Liberals"
"makes it clear that they are looking at the topic from the perspective of the Progressive Left."
lol
quite the tell
Correct, I am a normie Liberal.
I think that is one of the main divides in the modern Democratic party, us "Normie Liberals" (as I have increasingly heard it called) and the Progressives.
Why don't you let us decide what you are based on your actions, rather than tell us what you are?
Of course, the answer's obvious. FOAD troll.
Time to eat the rich, people. The billionaire class are a threat to a free society. No one should has as much power as these people do. Our next president needs to be someone who openly declares that we will be coming for you, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk, Thiel, Gates, Soros, Cuban, Murdoch, and company. Your time in the sun is over. We are taking all of your shit. You will have to subsist on a measly few hundred million, poor things. Your billions are ours now.
I’m on board. We need a tax regime, including wealth and inheritance taxes, that compel the billionaires to put the bulk of their holdings into foundations prohibited from any political spending at all. Undo Citizens United. Raise the minimum wage, evolve it to a living wage. Bring back antitrust enforcement.
Can we the people set up a fund to back candidates who pledge to end the oligarchy and the Imperial Presidency?
And Trump has given us a model for presidential behavior that should be emulated until laws or constitutional amendments are passed to prevent it. Just do stuff. Issue orders. Move funding around. Refuse to enforce laws. Enforce laws that may be an overreach. Stay ahead of the courts. Don't apologize.
We need to go way beyond preventing new mergers. Break up companies. Break up Facebook, Google, Amazon, the big cell networks. Use emergency powers to seize assets. Interpret every law you can within an inch of its life to cut against the billionaires and big corporations. And don't wait for a bunch of process, hearings, citizen feedback, and all that. Just start blowing up the rich the way they started blowing up our country.
Marty barron's book describes Bezos during Trump's first term rather favorably, despite Trump's attacks on Amazon vis a vis the USPS. My guess is that seeing his arch-rival Musk in authority and Trump's unleashed second term that Bezos is following up his killing of the Harris endorsement with another attempt at placation.
It's called anticipatory compliance. One slip down the slope.
Obviously Bezos can do this, but the thing I think he doesn't understand is that there are already tons of outlets for this tired libertarian line. Reason's blogs are free and not bad. Why should people pay for the Post if this is its value proposition? Bezos doesn't understand why people read the paper he bought.
Oh, he understands that there are already tons of outlets peddling the same 'ol same 'ol. He also understands that the markets for that niche of thought are a) small, and b) saturated. No, Bezos bought a formerly highly thought of newspaper because of its national reputation and subscriber-base. He knows well that it got that reputation and base in large part because it was known _not_ part of the right-wing media ecosystem and now he intends to hag-ride that reputation right into the ground. He's every bit the vulture capitalist harvesting an organization's assets, it's just that in this case the asset is an intangible one.
There are no free markets. There are only managed markets.
If all markets were truly "free", you could sell your grandmother into slavery.
It is the managed markets that we have today which enabled Bezos to have a high net worth, so he's going to be all in on more-of-the-same, despite them leading straight to toxic levels of inequality.
It's clearly a dog whistle to mean pro-oligarchical conservativism, that's the whole thing.
What he's saying is that the editorial board is irrelevant.