Just try to wrap your brain around what’s happened this week in the left-wing media: MSNBC canceled Joy Reid’s show and laid off a number of people working on the Rachel Maddow program for good measure. Just yesterday (Feb. 26), the owner of The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, announced a change in the direction of the newspaper’s opinion page. Henceforth, the most influential newspaper in the nation’s capital will write “in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” according to Bezos. Opposing views “will be left to be published by others.”
The billionaire owner of the historic newspaper that defines the term “legacy media” and boasts the dystopian message “Democracy Dies in Darkness” on its masthead went on to say, “I am of America and for America, and proud to be so.”
The new edict, along with such rah-rah language, sent readers’ heads spinning: “Bezos has hired a new opinion editor, and we can expect more tripe in days to come. His explanation is such a transparent attempt at trying to save face under the banners of defending personal freedom and the free markets –or some such rubbish,” remarked one WaPo regular amid a bevy of unsubscribers. “Free market? I honestly thought I could hold out another couple of months with my subscription, silly me,” wrote another.
But that’s the nice thing about billionaires owning a newspaper. They can do what they want with it. The Post already lost an estimated 250,000 subscribers when it failed to endorse Kamala Harris for president – a controversial decision, to say the least. What’s a few more to Bezos? The Post has been drowning in red ink anyway.
It didn’t take long for The New York Times to dance on the grave of its archrival: “The new direction envisioned for The Post’s opinion section appears to be a rightward shift for the paper. Mr. Bezos’ new focus echoes what has long been the informal tagline of The Wall Street Journal’s conservative opinion pages: ‘Free markets, free people.’”
As Washington Post Opinion Editor David Shipley exits stage left, Chief Executive Will Lewis made an effort to stanch the bleeding. He wrote in a memo that The Post was “not about siding with any political party.” Other Post staffers took to Bluesky, the leftist alternative to X, to say they would be carefully watching whether Bezos sticks his nose into their respective fiefdoms.
There is no doubt the leftist media and its legacy partners are under siege. This week, a federal judge refused to force the White House to restore The Associated Press’ access to presidential events. The White House Correspondents’ Association has had a lengthy stranglehold on which news outlets are permitted access to the chief executive and a coveted seat in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room. Their salad days are over as the White House communications team took the reins of power and opened the venue to new media outlets. Still, the AP says it will continue its fight. Another hearing on the matter is scheduled for March 20.
As American news consumers continue to broaden their information consumption to the many offerings on the web, it becomes more difficult for the old guard to maintain its once lofty perch. And as they flee to other sources, the left-wing media must either adapt or wither away to insignificance. This move by Bezos signals he believes the best course of action for The Washington Post is to adapt. And he just may be right.