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Bezos and the new direction of the Washington Post opinion pages

ChastMastrChastMastr Shipmate
in Hell
Well, this pisses me off and depresses me, too.

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.

"Democracy dies in darkness," indeed.

Arguably, if he really means it, standing for "personal liberties and free markets" would still go against Trump in major ways, but I'm not expecting a robust push-back against those things Trump's crowd is doing which go against "personal liberties and free markets." Are we really going to see editorials fighting for LGBTQ rights, or against tariffs? Let's see if that happens. I won't hold my breath.

Comments

  • HedgehogHedgehog Shipmate
    In 2018, Bezos reacted in horror at the thought that he would ever interfere with the Washington Post's journalism.

    But, to be fair, he doesn't have a spine.
  • Stercus TauriStercus Tauri Shipmate
    I cancelled my subscription to the Post just before they caved to trump. It expires next month and I won't be persuaded to renew. They had lost the balance between reporting and comment, and there are plenty of other good North American news sources, like the BBC and the Grauniad. If I hadn't cancelled when I did, the reasons for Anne Telnaes resignation would have done it for me.
  • questioningquestioning Shipmate
    Stercus Tauri wrote: »
    I cancelled my subscription to the Post just before they caved to trump. It expires next month and I won't be persuaded to renew. They had lost the balance between reporting and comment, and there are plenty of other good North American news sources, like the BBC and the Grauniad. If I hadn't cancelled when I did, the reasons for Anne Telnaes resignation would have done it for me.

    We're another household that cancelled our subscription.
  • Lamb ChoppedLamb Chopped Shipmate
    edited February 28
    Me too just an hour ago.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    edited February 28
    @ChastMastr
    Are we really going to see editorials fighting for LGBTQ rights, or against tariffs?

    Well, The Wall Street Journal has already come out against Trump's tariffs, and they're at least as neoliberal as the Post, and probably moreso.

    So, yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if the Post under Bezos' guidelines is anti-tariff. Unless Bezos considers himself obligated to defend any policy, no matter how contra the current conservative consensus, put forth by Trump.
  • ArethosemyfeetArethosemyfeet Shipmate, Heaven Host
    stetson wrote: »
    @ChastMastr
    Are we really going to see editorials fighting for LGBTQ rights, or against tariffs?

    Well, The Wall Street Journal has already come out against Trump's tariffs, and they're at least as neoliberal as the Post, and probably moreso.

    So, yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if the Post under Bezos' guidelines is anti-tariff. Unless Bezos considers himself obligated to defend any policy, no matter how contra the current conservative consensus, put forth by Trump.

    I fear the latter - Bezos is acting out of self-interest, not principle. It's very much a case of "follow the money". For Bezos that means Amazon Web Services. We think of Amazon as being an online shop or a streaming provider but those are borderline loss-leaders to Amazon's main profit centre, providing cloud computing of various kinds. AWS makes up ~15% of Amazon's revenue but well over half its profit, and it is the biggest player in the cloud computing sector. If Trump chose to fuck with AWS (say, by demanding that anyone getting federal funding not use them for their systems) he could do a huge amount of damage.
  • chrisstileschrisstiles Hell Host
    Arethosemyfeet wrote: »
    . If Trump chose to fuck with AWS (say, by demanding that anyone getting federal funding not use them for their systems) he could do a huge amount of damage.

    Apart from anything else the federal government are one of the largest consumers of AWS (both govcloud and a share of the new joint warfare cloud).

    This is the era of the richest oligarchs manoeuvring to get a spigot of money from the state.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    Stercus Tauri wrote: »
    ... there are plenty of other good North American news sources, like the BBC and the Grauniad ...
    I think you'll find that they're both British ... 🙃
  • ArethosemyfeetArethosemyfeet Shipmate, Heaven Host
    Piglet wrote: »
    Stercus Tauri wrote: »
    ... there are plenty of other good North American news sources, like the BBC and the Grauniad ...
    I think you'll find that they're both British ... 🙃

    I think "sources of news about North America" might have been a clearer phrasing.
  • Stercus TauriStercus Tauri Shipmate
    They both have well staffed and very competent Washington bureaux, so you can take it either way.
  • mousethiefmousethief Shipmate
    Stercus Tauri wrote: »
    They both have well staffed and very competent Washington bureaux, so you can take it either way.

    Is Subaru an American car maker? They make some cars here.
  • RuthRuth Shipmate
    I cancelled my subscriptions to the Washington Post and the LA Times in October when their owners spiked editorials endorsing Kamala Harris. I'm keeping the NY Times for the time being, and the Guardian's US coverage is good. Finding regional news outside the LA Times and local news after the Long Beach Post imploded last year has been much harder.

    chrisstiles wrote: »
    This is the era of the richest oligarchs manoeuvring to get a spigot of money from the state.
    Exactly.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Ben Bradlee must be turning in his grave.
  • BullfrogBullfrog Shipmate
    I wonder if they're trying to turn newspapers into propaganda outlets, taking a financial loss for political gain. I suspected that was what Elon was trying to do with Twitter, wrecking it as a business to turn it into a political safe space to build his cult.

    I dropped WaPo a while ago and tentatively switched to the NYTimes, keeping Vox on the side. We'll see if it sticks. Thinking about Reuters, which seems to have recently adopted a paywall.
  • ChastMastrChastMastr Shipmate
    Bullfrog wrote: »
    I wonder if they're trying to turn newspapers into propaganda outlets, taking a financial loss for political gain. I suspected that was what Elon was trying to do with Twitter, wrecking it as a business to turn it into a political safe space to build his cult.

    I dropped WaPo a while ago and tentatively switched to the NYTimes, keeping Vox on the side. We'll see if it sticks. Thinking about Reuters, which seems to have recently adopted a paywall.

    Whether it was his plan all along, Musk turning Twitter into a far-right echo chamber that let Trump back in and doesn’t fact-check anymore may have reaped the benefits of getting to do all kinds of government stuff which coincidentally seems to benefit him a lot.

    https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-elon-musk-doge-weaken-regulators-1235284085/

    AP is good also for news.
  • MarsupialMarsupial Shipmate
    edited March 5
    I have a long history with the Post (I subscribed to the old fashioned paper version when I was a student living in DC in the 1990s) and the latest messaging comes as an unpleasant surprise to say the least. The commentary in the Atlantic about this is all over the map, seeing various levels of Bezos enthusiasm ranging from actual enthusiasm to trying to prevent Trump from doing damage to his companies.

    There is obviously a lot not to like about this, the worst of it IMO being the suspicion it creates about the bona fides of anyone expressing views that seem to align too obviously with Bezos’s directive.

    That said -

    I’ve been continuing to read the Post and to date (I know it’s early days) I haven’t seen a dramatic shift in the opinion content of the Post. Personal liberties and free markets is broad enough to cover much of the American political spectrum, and much of it (tariffs anyone?) not exactly friendly to Trump. If this is an obligatory Trumpward genuflection to save Bezos’s a** elsewhere, it may turn out to be pretty meaningless depending on what the cash value of all this turns out to be.

    In principle, it would much better if the Post were not owned by a single tech billionaire. In practice, many papers that are not owned by a single tech billionaire are much worse papers than the Post. So there may be some value in bending so as not to break.

    All of which is to say we live in unusual times and I haven’t given up my subscription quite yet.
  • Stercus TauriStercus Tauri Shipmate
    It's worth looking at the 'About the Post' page on their website, https://www.washingtonpost.com/about-the-post/ and specifically where it says:

    The newspaper’s duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners.

    (You don't need a subscription to read this).
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