And why assume that a commitment to ‘individual liberties’ and ‘free markets’ means the page will be pro-Trump?
Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we look at the liberal reaction to changes within the Washington Post’s opinion section, and cover more media misses.
Democrats Cry Democracy is Dying after Bezos Shakes Up WaPo’s Opinion Pages
Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos announced last week that he would be reorienting the paper’s opinion page towards defending personal liberties and free markets.
“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 can be left to be published by others,” Bezos wrote.
Bezos has lost hundreds of millions of dollars on the paper since purchasing it in 2013 and his decision to shift the focus of its opinion page to differentiate it from its competitors likely makes commercial sense. But it’s also in keeping with the long tradition of American newspaper owners orienting their opinion pages around their own political and cultural beliefs, while maintaining a firewall, of varying heights, between themselves and their paper’s reportorial product.
For example, a similar shift was seen at the New York Post when ownership traded off from Dorothy Schiff to Rupert Murdoch many years ago and the paper’s opinion pages went from espousing liberal to conservative views.
In fact, the Chicago Sun-Times then-editorial page editor Cheryl Reed made a similar announcement in 2007, announcing the paper would revert to its “liberal, working-class roots.”
But judging by their hysterical reactions, that historical context seems to have escaped prominent progressive pundits and likeminded politicians who were uniformly outraged that the paper was abandoning the “Resistance” branding it has taken on in recent years.
“Turns out democracy dies in the hands of oligarchs,” Representative Morgan McGarvey (D., Ky.) said.
Senator Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) accused the paper of “constrain[ing] the liberty of its editors to publish opinions not advancing its owner’s business interests.”
Former Washington Post editor Marty Baron told MSNBC the decision is a “betrayal of the heritage of the Washington Post. And I think a betrayal of the very idea of free expression.”
“We are in the middle of a totalitarian fascist coup in this country,” said Stony Brook University visiting professor Jeff Jarvis in response to the announcement.
Many critics of Bezos’s decision homed in on the idea that the move was done to get into Donald Trump’s good graces.
Bezos is “once again showing the danger of media ownership from billionaires in corporations seeking favor from the government (and Presidents) they are supposed to cover without fear or favor,” Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer said.
For Politico’s Michael Schaffer, the move was yet another example of “the idea that [Bezos] is messing around with the product in order to curry favor with his new pal Donald Trump, who has the power to withhold contracts from Amazon and other Bezos companies.”
Axios founder Jim VandeHei told Morning Joe that Bezos was among multiple owners of media companies who were “buckling.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t just shut down the opinion page,” VandeHei told MSNBC.
The New Yorker’s David Remnick called the move a “terrible tragedy.”
“This is the paper of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate and so much more,” he said during an appearance on Morning Joe.
Yet there is nothing in Bezos’s latest edict that would have prevented the paper from reporting on either of those key stories.
And, in fact, Bezos’s commitment to “personal liberties” and “free markets” may well end up yielding an opinion page that is decidedly at odds with a tariff-loving president whose commitment to the Bill of Rights is famously instrumental in nature.
Headline Fail of the Week
Media watchdog Honest Reporting blasts The Times for this “epitome of a headline fail”: “Two dead in ‘terror attack’ as Israel blocks aid into Gaza.”
Media Misses
• While NPR’s chief diversity officer is retiring, the outlet wants listeners to know it will continue to support and defend DEI initiatives. “NPR remains committed to supporting a diverse workforce, a welcoming workplace, and journalism that serves an audience that is representative of the American public,” NPR chief executive Katherine Maher wrote in a memo last week.
• The View co-host Joy Behar was left to correct herself last week after she claimed without evidence that Elon Musk was “pro-apartheid.”
“I’m getting some flack because I said that Musk was pro-apartheid. I don’t really know for sure if he was,” Behar saidt. “He grew up in that time when it was full-blown before the great Nelson Mandela fixed that. He was around at that time. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. He might have been a young guy too, so don’t be suing me, okay, Elon?”
• Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan thinks the New York Times needs to do a better job representing the Left. “I could’ve hired a bunch of Never-Trump Republicans, right?” Hasan said of his own media platform, Zeteo. “People who I’m friendly with. I didn’t do that. . . . Look, they’re everywhere. They’ve got enough platforms. What’s not doing fine when we’re talking about the diversity of viewpoints — you know, we’re obsessed with getting MAGA viewpoint out there. The New York Times will send 100 journalists in Iowa to speak to Trump voters, but what’s missing, of course, is the Left.”