Jeff Bezos, the billionaire Amazon founder and owner of the Washington Post, made waves this week when he announced the paper’s editorial page will be taking a new direction.
“We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” Bezos said in a note sent to staff on Wednesday. “We’ll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
Like most legacy media outlets, the Washington Post had devolved into a hard-left propaganda pamphlet in service of the Democratic Party long before Bezos bought the company in 2013. Time and time again, the Washington Post covered itself in shame with its wildly one-sided coverage of both foreign and domestic issues. The paper’s left-wing audience became so accustomed to the lies and propaganda that 200,000 Democrats canceled their Washington Post subscriptions after Bezos made the decision not to endorse former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
David Shipley, former Washington Post opinion editor, resigned upon hearing the news that his boss likes capitalism, and it is likely that many of the paper’s opinion writers will follow suit.
“I am of America and for America, and proud to be so,” Bezos posted on X. “Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.”
Obviously, the decision to remove the vitriolic hatred of half of the American people from the Washington Post’s opinion page is a positive development, but it might be too little, too late. Conservatives wisely ignore the Washington Post. The paper spent the better part of the last decade breathlessly attempting to destroy President Donald Trump and obstruct anything and everything Republicans aimed to accomplish in Washington.
In recent years, the Washington Post promoted every anti-Trump conspiracy theory while protecting Democrats from scrutiny, and it even eulogized the dead terrorist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, calling the former ISIS head an “austere religious scholar.” Right-wingers are unlikely to respect anything that comes from the Washington Post unless the paper spends the next several years painstakingly attempting to regain its credibility. And its left-wing audience has been trained, by corporate media outlets such as the Washington Post itself, to oppose free markets and individual liberty at all costs.
WASHINGTON POST OP-ED EDITOR EXITS AS JEFF BEZOS UNVEILS ‘FREE MARKET’ FOCUS
Most journalists and opinion writers won’t want to write in favor of freedom and individual liberty since the vast majority of them despise the nation’s founding principles. And if the reaction to the 2024 presidential election by both journalists and Democratic Party bosses is any indication, leftists are not yet ready to examine their priors and begin absorbing reasonable news coverage.
The decision by Bezos is admirable and should be celebrated, but with little to no right-wing audience, and a mission that sounds like nails on a chalkboard to the Left, it is hard to envision a scenario where the Washington Post returns to its former glory, in reputation or fiscal viability. Bezos built Amazon, one of the most influential and groundbreaking companies in generations, from the ground up, and if he wants to play a major role in the news business, a wiser investment would be to build something new and leave the Washington Post in the dustbin of history where it belongs.
Brady Leonard (@bradyleonard) is a musician, political strategist, and host of The No Gimmicks Podcast.