The Washington Post’s famously left-wing editorial page will undergo a severe ideological swerve under a dramatic policy change announced Wednesday by owner Jeff Bezos, a move that prompted the resignation of the opinion section’s editor.
“We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” Mr. Bezos said in a statement on X. “We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
The change will mean in part the Post editorial page will restrict the range of ideological voices on its op-ed page. While the paper’s own editorials leaned left, the paper also published regular conservative and liberal columnists and guest contributors.
The billionaire Amazon founder also said David Shipley, the opinion editor, declined an offer to lead the page’s new direction.
“I 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,’” Mr. Bezos said. “After careful consideration, David decided to step away.”
Mr. Bezos said the newspaper will undertake a hiring search for an opinion editor willing “to own this new direction.” The 61-year-old Mr. Shipley, who oversaw the paper’s editorials and its Opinions section, had been in the position since July 2022.
Post chief executive Will Lewis wrote in a separate memo to employees that the opinion page shift was “not about siding with any political party.”
“This is about being crystal clear about what we stand for as a newspaper,” Mr. Lewis wrote. “Doing this is a critical part of serving as a premier news publication across America and for all Americans.”
The move to upend the newspaper’s editorial viewpoint comes as the most significant in a series of shifts in the past year under Mr. Bezos, most notably when the opinion page declined to give its traditional endorsement to a presidential candidate in the 2024 election between Republican Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
Mr. Bezos, who bought the newspaper in 2013, cited the changing media landscape and his support for American values as influencing his decision. He did not suggest any changes were coming to The Post’s news coverage.
“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,” he said. “Today, the internet does that job.”
He added, “I am of America and for America, and proud to be so.”
“Our country did not get here by being typical,” Mr. Bezos said. “And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.”
He said he shared the changes Wednesday morning with the newspaper’s staff, and there was already some staff pushback online as the news leaked out.
Post economics reporter Jeff Stein spoke out on Bluesky and X, condemning the changes.
“Massive encroachment by Bezos into The Washington Post’s opinion section – makes clear dissenting views will not be published,” Mr. Stein wrote in his post. “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.”
And a liberal journalistic rival of the Post, Britain’s Guardian newspaper, was already using the Bezos edict Wednesday to raise funds.
“The Guardian will never take editorial direction from our billionaire owner — because thankfully, we don’t have one,” the Manchester-based publication said in a note to readers after the news broke. “Instead, we rely on readers like you to fund our truly independent work.”
Not surprisingly, the announcement drew praise from conservatives and other free-market fans while spurring an outcry from some readers, including Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent.
“This is what Oligarch ownership of the media looks like,” Mr. Sanders wrote on X. “The second-richest guy in the world, Bezos, owns The Washington Post. He has now declared that the editorial page of that paper is going Trump right-wing. Surprise, Mr. Musk agrees.”
Indeed, Trump administration figure Elon Musk applauded the policy shift, declaring on his X platform: “Bravo, @JeffBezos!”
Several subscribers voted with their feet, posting notices online indicating they had dropped their subscriptions.
In October, the Post reported that 250,000 readers unsubscribed following the newspaper’s non-endorsement in the 2024 election.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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