I & I Editorial BoardAmazon founder and owner of the Washington Post Jeff Bezos announced Wednesday that change is coming to the paper’s opinion pages. Going forward, they will be supporting and defending the “two pillars” that are “right for America,” “personal liberties and free markets.” It was helpful for those who oppose the change to identify themselves as enemies of personal liberties and free markets.
Bezos also said that “viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
“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’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.”
“Congratulations on becoming Reason Magazine!” Liz Wolfe, a Reason staffer tweeted in response.
Other reactions were not so kind. In fact, to a casual observer, it might seem as if Bezos had committed a felony by assaulting someone or had shot and killed Karl Marx, whose hostility to personal liberties and free markets has produced quite a few spiritual grandchildren and great-grandchildren who hold prominent places in American society.
There were of course the crude reactions from the crude people who believe the country is theirs to run.
Keith Olbermann, who used to be someone some time ago, before he came off of his hinges, said “the self-defenestrating” Washington Post is “somehow climbing back up the stairwell and throwing itself out another window while Bezos fires the opinion section and declares the paper utterly fascist.”
Get that? Personal liberties and free markets are “utterly fascist.” It takes a truly twisted person to reach that conclusion.
David Dayen of the American Prospect said in an email that he finds Bezos’ decision to defend personal liberty and free markets “deeply troubling.” Then he goes on to appeal for money from those who apparently also yearn to be shackled.
Washington Post staff freaked out as well.
Economics reporter Jeff Stein called Bezos’ announcement a “massive encroachment” on the opinion section.
Columnist Philip Bump, who must be worried that he won’t have a platform to endlessly call Trump a fascist, posted on Bluesky, the left bubble version of X “What the actual f***.”
So articulate.
Leah Greenberg, head of one of the endless leftwing groups that sprout in Washington, called it “A disgusting, gutless decision from Bezos that will go down in the history books as a textbook example of anticipatory obedience.”
We could go on. But you get the idea. The thoughtless invective and sputtering expletives, devoid of logic, are typical of today’s big news media, which are hardly thriving as agile competitors spring up.
The Post, once the respected newspaper of both Washington’s sprawling bureaucracy and its semi-permanent elected class, has been eclipsed in recent years by nimble online competitors as its staff became increasingly far left and out of touch.
The fact is, the Post can’t grow as now constituted. Bezos knows this. His out-of-touch journalists, used to having a blank check as they destroyed a once-great newspaper, don’t know this.
Like so many other billionaires, Bezos also knows something about the economy that the lefty journalists on his payroll don’t. And that is, whether his scribes like it or not, “personal liberties and free markets” are basically the American success story in a nutshell. And Bezos wants to tell it.
Was it a mistake to say that the Post op-ed page would only carry articles that support personal liberty and free markets? Possibly. Honest debates about issues on the Post’s editorial pages would be unique, and would showcase just how shallow and spiteful the left has become.
But then again, if the Post wants to once again expand and be a major player in American journalism (and not merely a trade journal for left-leaning U.S. government employees) it has to differentiate itself from the others.
Merely echoing the other failing voices among the mainstream media is no longer an option. And being a virtual adjunct to the Democratic Party is a losing cause.
Socialism, a system of government that has never succeeded anywhere, ever, is increasingly popular in the Donkey Party. In 2010, “just” 50% of Democrats said they had a “positive” view of socialism; in the most recent survey, taken in 2021, that number has surged to 65%.
Any surprise that a rational entrepreneur would want to walk back his news company’s full-throated support for that party and its devastating policies of the last four years?
So why not actually tell the truth? That the oppressive socialist economic policies and coercive “woke” restrictions on speech now so in vogue among Democrats are cultural and political dead ends? The rest of America wants its country back.
“This is about being crystal clear about what we stand for as a newspaper,” as Post CEO Will Lewis explained in a memo. “Doing this is a critical part of serving as a premier news publication across America and for all Americans.”
Yes, all Americans. And despite the childish rage of his far-left journalist employees, Bezos appears to be doing just that. Good luck, Jeff.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Are not the alarmists warning us about “threats to our democracy”, the ones who, with the implied ‘Repent, the end is nigh’ sandwich board held high, are the bigger threat?
Bezos’s move is generally good news for those who are sick of the Washington Post’s posturing. And yes, the schadenfreude experience of seeing what the whiners are saying is delicious
But I hope people will realize that Bezos seems to have another motive having to do with the huge subsidies he has benefitted from the US Postal Service for years.
But now … Amazon has reportedly cut its reliance on USPS to 9 percent of its packages (8% goes to United Parcel Service, and the rest is predominantly Amazon contractors and/or employees.
Now, with jurisdiction over USPS apparently moving to the Commerce Dept. under Trump, Amazon’s move away from USPS leaves mostly other companies who are benefitting from the subsidies (which one researcher pegged at $1.46 for every package shipped in 2020). Now, free-market cheerleader Bezos can advocate for the reconfigured USPS to eliminate the subsidies, hurting other companies and driving (pun intended) them to sell their wares on Amazon and ship with Amazon.
So while Bezos’s voice is welcome, I believe it has appeared at a time quite convenient for him. Let’s see if any of his opinion content providers are allowed to take notice.
Wapo became a leftist rag and has lost a substantial number of subscribers. If they lose more, they will become insolvent, and a newspaper no more. journalistas made themselves at home in the wapo nest, much like at nyt, their product is propaganda and not news, and people are sick of it. If bezos can’t clean it up, he may have to sell it. So, aspiring college students looking to become propagandists, this is shape of things to come. What are the elements of an honest straightforward news story vs. what kind of crap are you attempting to publish. Do you need bodily thrashed to improve your honesty integrity and professionalism-stuff.
Leave it to the economist at the Washington Post to say what I don’t believe he wanted to say: “Economics reporter Jeff Stein called Bezos’ announcement a “massive encroachment” on the opinion section.
Since the publisher says that the Washington Post’s opinion columns will now include columns on liberty and free markets, I guess the eminent economist Jeff Stein doesn’t want any of that.
Like COVID, I suppose he thinks it might infect the current columns that are now devoted to socialism, totalitarianism and authoritarianism.
As the Mandy Patikin character told the Wallace Shawn character in the movie The Princess Bride, “What you are saying doesn’t mean what you think it does.”
But it is helpful that the Jeff Stein creature comes out of the closet to self-identify himself as being for the columns the Post now carries, ie, anti-liberty and anti-free markets columns.
We all knew it all along; it’s great that it has now been confirmed.