On Wednesday, Amazon founder, billionaire, Washington Post owner, and newfound Trump supplicant Jeff Bezos made an announcement that shook the media world and heralded the death of corporate media.

Bezos informed staff and then tweeted out the major change to the Washington Post editorial page:

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.

Now, Bezos is not dumb. He intentionally wrote this in the sort of gauzy language that makes it all seem so inoffensive. But let’s be clear about what he means — the paper he owns will only publish opinions he agrees with. Dissenting viewpoints are not welcome and will not be tolerated.

Don’t take my word for it.

David Shipley, the Post’s Opinion Editor, resigned over the decision. Marty Baron, the famed former editor of the paper, said in a statement:

“Bezos argues for personal liberties… But his news organization now will forbid views other than his own in its opinion section. It was only weeks ago that The Post described itself as providing coverage for ‘all of America.’ Now its opinion pages will be open to only some of America, those who think exactly as he does.

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.”

While it has struggled financially in recent years, the Washington Post is one of the most essential media brands in the country. The Post took down a president and published the Pentagon Papers, and embodies an independent press that covers the news without fear or favor.

With Bezos’s announcement, those days are over. We should have known this day was coming the moment Bezos bought the paper. Corporate-owned media is doomed to fail.

Why Would Bezos Do This?

For months, Jeff Bezos has been on a mission to woo Donald Trump. In the run-up to the election, he canceled the Post’s expected endorsement of Kamala Harris. After Trump, he made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to meet with the president-elect, donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, and then conspicuously sat right behind Trump during the swearing-in ceremony.

The changes to the editorial page need to be viewed in that context. Bezos had many business interests before the federal government. Amazon and Blue Origin (his space company) have contracts with the government. The MAGA goons Trump is installing at various regulatory agencies could target all of Bezos's business interests. Bezos decided that being on Trump’s good side is very much in his financial interest, and he will not let some journalistic ethics get in the way of a bigger yacht. Bezos was uncomfortable with the steady stream of anti-Trump content published under his banner.

It’s a free country. Bezos owns the paper. His investment in the Washington Post restored it to national prominence after a period of significant decline. If Bezos wants to turn the paper’s editorial page into an organ for viewpoints with which he agrees and benefits him financially, that is his prerogative. Jeff Stein, an economics reporter for the Post, took to Twitter to oppose the decision, but clarified that he has felt no such pressure on his reporting. The traditional firewall between news and opinion is apparently still holding — but for how long?

Let’s say that the Washington Post came into possession of damaging documents against Trump — something akin to the Access Hollywood tape or Trump’s tax returns. Would Bezos allow the scoop to be published? Or would he fear Trumpian punishment for the Post’s reporting?

The Corporate Media is the Problem

The problem is much bigger than the Washington Post. Ultimately, Jeff Bezos’s behavior speaks to the irreconcilable tension of a journalistic enterprise owned by a person or corporation with multiple interests before the government. The 21st century has been a period of media consolidation. ABC News is owned by the Walt Disney Corporation, CBS News by Paramount, CNN by Warner Brothers/Discovery, and NBC News by Comcast. Large private equity firms own most local newspapers and many local TV stations.

All of these conglomerates have two things in common. First, they do business with the federal government in the form of federal contracts and areas of regulation. Second, their media businesses are not particularly consequential to their bottom line and, in some cases, may drag the company’s stock price. To put that in perspective, Bezos bought the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million. In 2024, Amazon reported net sales of $680 billion.

These corporations are sacrificing journalistic integrity to protect their financial interests from Trump’s vengeance. Disney settled a specious defamation case against George Stephanopolous that ended with them donating $15 million to the Trump Library. Paramount is contemplating settling with Trump over an even more specious case: the editing of Kamala Harris's interview on 60 Minutes. Not coincidentally, Paramount’s potential merger could face regulatory scrutiny from the FCC.

The media landscape is changing so rapidly. The future is unknown, but it is clear that the era of corporate media is over. Journalism is not profitable enough for these massive corporations to take on any water due to their media endeavors.

Voters don’t trust corporations, and they should be skeptical of corporate media — even when the reporting is really good.

The future of media is independent. That means smaller entities, but they will also be free of corporate influence. That doesn’t mean they will be unbiased. Everyone has biases – even the New York Times, but those biases — ideological or otherwise — will be more transparent.

I encourage everyone to support independent media with their attention and their dollars. That means non-profit entities like ProPublica, accountability journalism from More Perfect Union and Popular Information , independent news like Jessica Yellin’s News Not Noise, and Courier News and and progressive pro-democracy outlets like The Bulwark, The Contrarian, Zeteo, and so many others.

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