Jeff Bezos announces restrictions on Washington Post opinion coverage

WASHINGTON - The Washington Post will no longer run views opposed to “personal liberties and free markets” on its opinion pages, owner Jeff Bezos announced on Feb 26, the billionaire’s latest intervention in the major US paper’s editorial operations.

The move, a major break from the norm at the Post and at most credible news media organisations worldwide, comes as US media faces increasing threats to its freedom and accusations of bias from President Donald Trump.

“We are going to be writing every day in support and defence of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” wrote Mr Bezos on social media platform X.

“We will cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”

Mr Bezos said the US capital’s premier daily did not have to provide opposing views because “the internet does that job”.

Ms Katherine Jacobsen of rights watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said: “If this was a regular news environment, we might just raise our eyebrows at this, but this is happening at a time of unprecedented pressures for journalists working in the United States.”

In October, Mr Bezos sparked controversy by blocking

the Post’s planned endorsement of then Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris

for the 2024 presidential election, triggering newsroom protests and subscriber cancellations.

In January, an award-winning political cartoonist for the newspaper announced her resignation after a cartoon depicting Mr Bezos grovelling before Mr Trump was rejected. At the time, editorial page editor David Shipley defended the decision, saying it was made to avoid repeated coverage on the same topic.

On Feb 26, Mr Bezos announced Mr Shipley would be leaving his post because he had not signed on to the new opinion pages policy.

“I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t ‘hell yes’, then it had to be ‘no’,” said Mr Bezos.

Other Post staff also expressed their concern.

“Massive encroachment by Jeff Bezos into The Washington Post’s opinion section today – makes clear dissenting views will not be published or tolerated there,” Mr Jeff Stein, the paper’s chief economics correspondent, wrote on X.

Mr Stein added that he had “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”.

Mr Bezos, owner of Amazon and the world’s third-richest man, along with other US tech moguls, has appeared increasingly close to Mr Trump since his election in 2024. He was among a group of tech billionaires who were

given prime positions at Mr Trump’s inauguration

, and he visited the Republican leader at his Mar-a-Lago estate during the transition period.

CPJ has documented “how ownership of media companies in countries such as Hungary and Russia has really had an impact on press freedom”, Ms Jacobsen cautioned.

“We would do well in the US to look at countries like that to see what happens when perhaps too much interest is given to owner interest versus serving the public good.” AFP