Jeff Bezos Just Killed the Legacy Media
The Washington Post just became a billionaire’s propaganda tool.
by Ben Cohen
Jeff Bezos, the second richest man in the world and owner of The Washington Post, sent shockwaves through the journalism community earlier this with an announcement that fundamentally alters one of America's most prestigious newspapers. In a note to Washington Post staff (which he promptly shared on X), Bezos declared that the paper's opinion section would now explicitly advocate for “personal liberties and free markets,” abandoning its tradition of presenting diverse viewpoints on major issues.
Here’s what he wrote:
I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning: I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages. 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 will be left to be published by others.
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.
I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. 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.
I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I 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. This is a significant shift, it won’t be easy, and it will require 100% commitment — I respect his decision. We’ll be searching for a new Opinion Editor to own this new direction.
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. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.
Jeff
Leaving aside the clunky sentences and corporate doublespeak, it isn’t difficult to see what Jeff Bezos is doing. Just as Mark Zuckerberg is showing up at UFC events dressed in full MAGA garb, Bezos is sending a message to Donald Trump.
Behind the public branding shift, Bezos is furiously aligning his media property with the political winds of the new Trump administration—precisely as his vast business interests face potential government scrutiny. This ideological pivot comes at a critical moment when tech billionaires across Silicon Valley are scrambling to demonstrate their loyalty to the new power structure in Washington.
If you had any doubt about this, consider that after publishing his note to X on Wednesday, Bezos had dinner with Donald Trump that very evening.
The Bezos empire
Bezos, whose business interests include Amazon, Blue Origin, and The Washington Post, knows full well that Trump can make life extremely difficult for him. The administration has massively intensified its control over the media since taking power, utilizing tactics such as lawsuits, blacklisting, and manipulation of access. These measures could directly impact The Washington Post, potentially limiting its access to information and thus its relevance as one of the nation’s most important papers.
More important to Bezos though are the real engines of his business empire. Blue Origin, his space exploration company, and Amazon also have extremely lucrative contracts with the federal government. NASA awarded Blue Origin a $3.4 billion contract in 2023 to develop the Blue Moon landing system for the Artemis V mission. The National Security Agency (NSA) awarded a cloud computing contract valued at up to $10 billion to Amazon Web Services in July of 2021. If Trump and Musk decide to focus on Mars exploration, or decide that AWS is outdated an inefficient, Bezos stands to lose billions.
What’s in and what’s out
Just as Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai embraced ‘wokeism’ after the 2016 election, Jeff Bezos jumped on the bandwagon too, making DEI central to his companies’ brand. Amazon created multiple DEI programs for current or potential employees, and Bezos became known as “the first ‘woke’ billionaire philanthropist”.
Fast forward to 2025, and Zuckerberg, Pichai, and Bezos have rapidly dismantled their DEI programs.
After years of censoring and destroying websites that allegedly violated Facebook’s opaque content guidelines, Zuckerberg is now a believer in ‘free speech’ again (he even said so on Joe Rogan). Pinchai ended all diversity hiring goals at Google, and Bezos ordered all references to protecting black and LGBTQ+ people to be removed from a public listing of Amazon’s corporate policies.
It is one thing for gigantic tech companies to abruptly reverse their loudly celebrated commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion at the drop of a dime, but it is another for the second richest man in the world to order the Washington Post to pump out right wing propaganda.
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“Personal liberties” and “free markets”
While “personal liberties” and “free markets” sound like universally appealing principles, we should examine what these terms actually mean in Bezos's context.
First of all, anyone familiar with Bezos’s business practices knows that he has no interest in the free market, or personal liberties. To the contrary, Bezos made his fortune by helping destroy free markets in America, and undermining personal liberties in the workplace.
Amazon has frequently sold products at a loss to drive competitors out of business, using profits from AWS and other divisions to subsidize these practices. As a dominant buyer in many supply chains, Amazon dictates terms to suppliers and extracts concessions that smaller retailers cannot, creating uneven competition. Amazon has also acquired competitors (like Zappos and Whole Foods), eliminating potential competitive threats.
Amazon's labor practices are notoriously repressive. There have been reports of extreme productivity quotas forcing employees to skip breaks, urinate in bottles, and work at unsafe speeds. Workers describe physically demanding jobs with minimal rest periods and risk of injury. Amazon is also heavily dependent on temporary and seasonal workers who receive fewer benefits and have less job security than permanent employees.
So when a billionaire talks about personal liberties and free markets, they aren’t talking about increasing personal freedom or creating actual free markets. They are talking about preserving the mechanisms in society that allow them to become billionaires. This means deregulation, low taxes, lax labor laws, and gutting anti-trust laws.
Bezos knows these are popular buzzwords in right wing circles though, so he is marketing his paper to a new audience in the hopes that it endears him to the new administration.
How to destroy your reputation
The Washington Post is one of the most influential and respected newspapers in the United States with a long track record of stellar investigative journalism. Its opinion pages help shape narratives surrounding the news and give readers vital perspectives on extremely complicated topics. Diversity of opinion then is extremely important, and it is one of the reasons why the Post gained its reputation in the first place. To commit the paper to an ideology that just happens to benefit its billionaire owner is a serious abdication of duty and the ushering in of a new, dark era for the media.
The Washington Post can no longer be considered a serious news outlet committed to speaking truth to power. It is a mouthpiece of an oligarch whose sole objective is to protect his profit margins.
In some ways we should be grateful for Bezos openly pandering to Donald Trump and humiliating his staff at the Washington Post. It is an illuminating example of how the American oligarchical system works. The owners of our society are no longer hiding who they are or what they want from us. Bezos’ move lays bare the reality that in modern media, corporate ownership dictates editorial direction—not journalistic integrity. The shift at the Post isn’t just about ideology; it’s about safeguarding wealth and influence at any cost.
Independent media organizations — namely those not controlled by corporate conglomerates or individual billionaires — now serve as the only counterweights to propaganda in our information ecosystem. Oligarchs have killed the legacy media, and only independent, reader-supported outlets can fill the crucial void.
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I shall look carefully for the articles on the WP opinion pages supporting the freedoms currently under fire by MAGA and MAGA-adjacent groups, including the right wing pseudo-Christian organizations and corporate churches. For example, the freedom of women to control their own bodies and to travel inside the US for any purpise, including obtaining an abortion where it is legal; the freedom to love, regardless of gender, including to marry; the freedom to express one's individual sexuality and to obtain medical care supporting that expression; the freedom to practice non-Christian religious beliefs (or no religious beliefs) without oppression; the freedon to assemble peacably to petition the government without threats of violence from the government or its paramilitary offshoots; and the freedom to challenge the existing federal executive administration without being silenced or attacked.
I won't hold my breath.
Resist. React. Repeat.