Jeff Bezos is muzzling the Washington Post’s opinion section. That’s a death knell | Margaret Sullivan

Owners and publishers of news organizations often exert their will on opinion sections. It would be naive to think otherwise.

But a draconian announcement this week by Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post owner, goes far beyond the norm.

The billionaire declared that only opinions that support “personal liberties” and “free markets” will be welcome in the opinion pages of the Post.

“Viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others,” he added.

The paper’s top opinion editor, David Shipley, couldn’t get on board with those restrictions. He immediately – and appropriately – resigned.

Especially in light of the billionaire’s other blatant efforts to cozy up to Donald Trump, Bezos’s move is more than a gut punch; it’s more like a death knell for the once-great news organization he bought in 2013.

It’s unclear what will happen to such excellent left-of-center columnists as Catherine Rampell, Eugene Robinson and EJ Dionne. And it’s unclear to what extent this ruling eventually will affect the paper’s hard-news coverage, which so far has been unbowed in covering the chaotic rollout of the new Trump administration.

What is clear is that Bezos no longer wants to own an independent news organization. He wants a megaphone and a political tool that will benefit his own commercial interests.

It’s appalling. And, if you care about the role of the press in America’s democracy, it’s tragic.

“What Bezos is doing today runs counter to what he said, and actually practiced, during my tenure at the Post,” Martin Baron, the paper’s executive editor until 2021 and the author of the 2023 memoir Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos and the Washington Post, told me in an email Wednesday.

“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 interest,” Baron said. “Now, I couldn’t be more sad and disgusted.”

Bezos is sacrificing the Post’s reputation and any hope for its financial stability on the altar of personal gain. Recall that the company lost some 300,000 subscribers a couple of months ago after Bezos forbid the publication, just before the presidential election, from publishing a planned editorial endorsing Trump’s Democratic rival, Kamala Harris.

More recently, the Post refused to publish Ann Telnaes’s cartoon that showed American oligarchs, including Bezos, bowing to Trump; in protest, she resigned from the Post, where she had worked since 2008.

This latest move certainly will mean more Post subscribers will flee, partly in protest and partly because the paper – at least on its opinion side – no longer does the job.

Having worked at the Post myself as its media columnist for six years, until 2022, I know the paper’s readership well.

Post subscribers are well-informed, smart and savvy; they know and appreciate the paper’s history, including the way it bravely stood up to presidential power during the Pentagon Papers and Watergate eras when the Graham family were the owners.

These readers span the traditional political spectrum from liberal to old-school conservative. And they understand the sometimes adversarial relationship between government and the press.

This outrageous move will enrage them. I foresee a mass subscriber defection from an outlet already deep in red ink; that must be something businessman Bezos is willing to live with.

He must also be willing to live with hypocrisy.

“Bezos argues for personal liberties. But his news organization now will forbid views other than his own in its opinion section,” Baron pointed out, recalling that it was only weeks ago when the Post described itself in an internal mission statement as intended for “all of America”.

“Now,” Baron noted, “its opinion pages will be open to only some of America, those who think exactly as he does.”

It’s all about getting on board with Trump, to whose inauguration Bezos – through Amazon, the company he co-founded – contributed a million dollars. That allowed him a prime seat, along with others of his oligarchical ilk.

“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],” Baron said. Now, Baron added, he is prioritizing those interests and, in so doing, “betraying the Post’s long-standing principles to do so”.

As a Post loyalist myself – drawn into my career by the courageous journalism I admired as a teenager in the 1970s, thrilled to join its ranks in 2016 – I’m crushed to see its precipitous decline.

Bezos set out to save the Washington Post from financial ruin when he bought it, and, for a time, he did that and more.

But the best thing he could do now would be to sell it to someone who understands the stewardship of a national treasure.