Billionaire Jeff Bezos is retooling The Washington Post’s opinion section to focus on “free markets and personal liberties,” saying the newspaper he owns will no longer publish op-eds that are not supportive of those ideals.
In a note to staff Wednesday, Bezos told employees, “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,” he said.
“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 continued. “Today, the internet does that job.”
Bezos said he offered Post editorial page editor David Shipley an opportunity to continue to lead the department under this new directive, which Shipley declined.
In his own note to the Post newsroom Wednesday, CEO William Lewis said he welcomed the change and thanked Shipley for his service.
“This is not about siding with any political party,” Lewis wrote. “This is about being crystal clear about what we stand for as a newspaper. Doing this is a critical part of serving as a premier news publication across America and for all Americans.”
Bezos’s directive comes at a time of major change at the Post, which has been reeling from key staff departures and a decision by Bezos and its leadership against endorsing a presidential candidate in last November’s election.
Bezos had defended that decision, saying endorsements “create a perception of bias,” and denied he was trying to curry favor with President Trump, as some had suggested.
The billionaire founder of Amazon has spoken with optimism about Trump’s second term and attended his January inauguration, along with a number of other leading tech executives.
