Jeff Bezos orders new Washington Post opinion policy, says top editor resigned

Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and owner of the Washington Post, said Wednesday that his newspaper’s opinion pages would now be dedicated to supporting “personal liberties and free markets,” and that the organization would not publish opposing views.

“We’ll cover other topics too of course,” Bezos said in an email to Post staffers that he posted on X. “But viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”

While the move garnered praise from some in President Donald Trump’s administration, such as Elon Musk, it was panned by some current and former Post staffers, including former editor Marty Baron, who said he was “disgusted.”

Bezos said that editorial page editor David Shipley, who had held the job for over two years, decided to resign rather than lead the opinion section under the new policy.

“I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t ‘hell yes,’ then it had to be ‘no,'” Bezos said of Shipley, adding, “I respect his decision.”

The Post will be “searching for a new Opinion Editor to own this new direction,” Bezos said.

He asserted that while a major newspaper might once have considered it a service to offer its readers “a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views,” that is no longer the case.

“Today, the internet does that job,” Bezos wrote.

“I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America,” he added. “I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.”

Representatives for Bezos and the Post, as well as Shipley, did not immediately return CNBC’s requests for additional comment.

By erecting new parameters around what opinions the Post can print, Bezos will likely draw fresh accusations that he is seeking to curry favor with Trump, who has long attacked the paper as “Fake News.”

Less than two weeks before the 2024 presidential election between the Republican Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, the Post announced that it would not endorse either candidate, breaking with decades of recent precedent.

The Post in a news article at the time reported that the paper’s editorial staff had planned to endorse Harris, and that Bezos himself made the decision to end the tradition.

Four days later, the newspaper reported that at least 250,000 of its readers had canceled their subscriptions following the policy shift.

After Trump won the election, Bezos’ Amazon joined with numerous other tech giants in donating hefty sums to the then-president-elect’s inaugural fund. While Bezos stepped down as CEO of the company in 2021, he still serves as its executive chairman.

Bezos was also spotted dining with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home and club in Florida. The tech megabillionaire later attended Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, standing alongside Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google leader Sundar Pichai and Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO.

Musk, who leads Trump’s government-slashing task force known as DOGE, praised Bezos for implementing the editorial change.

Multiple staffers have recently quit the Post in protest. Cartoonist Ann Telnaes left the paper in early January, after accusing her bosses of killing her drawing of businessmen — including one resembling Bezos — genuflecting at an altar of Trump. When she resigned the same month, columnist Jennifer Rubin accused Bezos and other rich media moguls of enabling Trump and betraying their audiences’ loyalty.

In reacting to Bezos’ announcement Wednesday morning, some have noted that Amazon is currently involved in an antitrust lawsuit brought by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Prior to Trump’s inauguration, Puck News first reported that Amazon would pay $40 million to license a documentary about first lady Melania Trump. The Wall Street Journal reported this month that Melania will pocket more than 70% of that total.

It is not unprecedented for a newspaper’s owner to involve themselves in editorial decisions, New York University journalism professor Adam Penenberg told CNBC. He pointed to the New York Post’s conservative shift after Rupert Murdoch’s takeover in 1976, and Sheldon Adelson’s push to make the Las Vegas Review-Journal more pro-business.

But Penenberg noted that Bezos’ order for his paper’s editorial pages to comply with specific ideological views sets him apart.

The announcement spurred a range of initial responses from reporters at the Post — some of whom said the news department will not be affected.

“As I’ve stated before: Nothing changes,” wrote Dan Lamothe, who covers military affairs, on X later Wednesday morning. “We ask hard questions and hold those in power to account. That’s the job, whether those in power like it or not.”

But chief economic reporter Jeff Stein called Bezos’ decision a “massive encroachment” into the paper’s opinion section that “makes clear dissenting views will not be published or tolerated.”

“I still have not felt encroachment on my journalism on the news side of coverage, but if Bezos tries interfering with the news side I will be quitting immediately and letting you know,” Stein wrote on X.

Baron, who retired as editor of the Post in 2021 after eight years in the role, slammed Bezos in a scathing statement to the Daily Beast later Wednesday.

“What Bezos is doing today runs counter to what he said, and actually practiced, during my tenure at The Post,” Baron said. “I have always been grateful for how he stood up for The Post and an independent press against Trump’s constant threats to his business interests. Now I couldn’t be more sad and disgusted.”

Philip Bump, a current Post opinion columnist, wrote on Bluesky: “What the actual f—.”