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Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos’s move to dramatically change the direction of its opinion section is drawing heavy condemnation from the paper’s former editor.
In a statement to Mediaite, Marty Baron — who led the Post for nearly a decade before leaving in 2021 — slammed Bezos over his announcement Wednesday that the opinion section will take a very different 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 statement. “We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
In his announcement Bezos revealed that Post opinion editor David Shipley resigned as a result of the editorial mandate.
Baron sees the new direction as capitulation to President Donald Trump.
“Bezos argues for personal liberties,” Baron told Mediaite in a statement. “But his news organization now will forbid views other than his own in its opinion section. It was only
Baron added, “Bezos himself has done personal liberties a disservice by cravenly yielding to a president who shows no respect for liberty — one who aims to use the power of government to bully, threaten, punish and crush anyone who is not in his camp, especially the press.”
The motivation for Bezos to order this editorial shift seems clear to Baron.
“There is no doubt in my mind that he is doing this out of fear of the consequences for his other business interests, Amazon (the source of his wealth) and Blue Origin (which represents his lifelong passion for space exploration),” Baron told Mediaite. “He has prioritized those commercial interests over The Post, and he is betraying The Post’s longstanding principles to do so.”
He added that Bezos’s prior move ahead of the 2024 election to forbid the opinion section from endorsing a presidential candidate “undermined The Post’s credibility.”
“I couldn’t be more sad and disgusted,” Baron said.