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Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos is overhauling the newspaper’s opinion section to focus more narrowly on two topics — personal liberties and free markets — in the most sweeping intervention into its editorial pages by the US technology billionaire.
Bezos said opinion editor David Shipley had opted to stand down as a result of the shake-up of the award-winning section, in an email to staff that was also posted on social media on Wednesday.
Shipley had been given the option to remain as editor of the section, Bezos said, but the Amazon founder had “suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t ‘hell yes’, then it had to be ‘no.’ After careful consideration, David decided to step away.”
In the email, Bezos said the newspaper would be writing “every day in support and defence 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. Today, the internet does that job.”
Bezos was until last year viewed as a largely hands-off owner of the Washington Post, which he acquired in August 2013 for $250mn. But his decision to prevent the newspaper from endorsing a US presidential candidate last year sparked a major backlash from readers.
The decision not to run an opinion piece endorsing Kamala Harris, which had been drafted by the Post’s editorial writers, was seen by media commentators as an attempt to side with Donald Trump ahead of the election — or at least hedge his bets.
However, the tech billionaire defended his position in a subsequent editorial. He said that newspaper endorsement no longer carried much weight, and that there was “no quid pro quo of any kind” involved in the decision.
He added that while the chief executive of his space company Blue Origin had met Trump on the same day the Post announced its decision not to endorse a candidate, there was “no connection” between that and the move.
“I challenge you to find one instance in those 11 years where I have prevailed upon anyone at the Post in favour of my own interests. It hasn’t happened,” he added.
The newspaper increased subscribers during Trump’s first administration. But while readers enjoyed its tough coverage of Trump, tensions emerged between Bezos and the president, who labelled the newspaper “The Amazon Washington Post”.
In one tweet in 2018, Trump suggested that Bezos’s ownership of the paper was “protection” against an antitrust suit. He also claimed Amazon was “getting away with murder, tax-wise”.
A year later, Amazon filed a lawsuit claiming it had been denied a $10bn US defence contract for cloud computing services because of “escalating and overt pressure” from the then president. The defence department later awarded the so-called Jedi contract to Microsoft.
Since Trump’s November election, Amazon has taken steps that have been interpreted as efforts to stay on the right side of the new administration. In January, the company said it would release a “behind the scenes” documentary about Melania Trump that will be executive produced by first lady. The company reportedly paid $40mn for the exclusive deal, which came just weeks after Amazon donated $1mn to the president-elect’s inauguration committee.
This week’s intervention into the Post’s comment section marks a turning point in Bezos’s involvement in one of the US’s most storied newspapers because the email signalled he was behind the change in direction.
“I am of America and for America, and proud to be so,” Bezos said. “I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion.”
In a separate email to staff, Will Lewis, who was appointed publisher and chief executive by Bezos in 2023, said the move was “not about siding with any political party”.
Washington Post journalists responded with anger to the move. Jeff Stein, chief economics reporter for the newspaper, described it on social media as a “massive encroachment by Jeff Bezos into The Washington Post’s opinion section today — makes clear dissenting views will not be published or tolerated there”.
He said this had not been felt on the “news side of coverage, but if Bezos tries interfering with the news side I will be quitting immediately and letting you know”. Elon Musk, posting on X, said: “Bravo, @JeffBezos.”
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