Jeff Bezos eyes a new era for the Washington Post as its opinion editor says ‘sayonara’ 

There’s a saying that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. And right now, America’s media landscape is hitting some familiar notes.

Jeff Bezos has announced that The Washington Post’s opinion section will take a new editorial direction, focusing exclusively on “personal liberties and free markets.” (What better time to rebrand The Post as a staunch defender of free markets? If your newspaper becomes the loudest cheerleader for free markets, it might just make it harder for regulators to paint Amazon as a monopolist.)

More importantly, the billionaire also made it crystal clear that dissenting opinions are someone else’s problem. In his own words: opposing viewpoints “will be left to be published by others.” David Shipley, the now-former opinion editor, declined to stick around for this new vision. Bezos told Shipley that if his answer wasn’t a “hell yes,” it had to be a “no.” Shipley chose the latter, stepping away after only a year on the job. Bezos has promised to find someone new to “own” this editorial direction.

The whole idea of staying “neutral” in journalism or opinions is a load of crap. It’s a feel-good concept presented as a virtue, but in practice, it’s often just a convenient excuse to avoid confronting uncomfortable truths. It’s the same logic that keeps news outlets endlessly giving airtime to “both sides” of an issue, even when one side is clearly wrong. Climate change? Let’s put a scientist debating a guy like Andrew Tate with a YouTube channel on the same panel. Racism? Surely there’s a “neutral” position somewhere in the middle!

If this were ancient Greece, the Washington Post’s opinion section would be Socrates, sipping its last cup of editorial hemlock. The philosopher paid the ultimate price for asking uncomfortable questions. His method of relentlessly questioning the status quo made him a thorn in the side of Athens’ elites, who convicted him of “corrupting the youth.” 

If it were the Catholic Church of the Renaissance, Jeff Bezos would be penning his very own Index Librorum Prohibitorum — a list of ideas deemed too dangerous (or inconvenient) to publish. And if we were in Hans Christian Andersen’s Denmark, Bezos might just be the emperor strutting around in an invisible suit of “personal liberties and free markets.” In Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes, a vain emperor is conned into believing he’s wearing magical garments that only the wise can see. Everyone around him, too afraid to call him out, pretends they see the clothes. It takes a child to point out the obvious: the emperor is naked.

In the end, it’s hard to ignore how convenient this newfound passion for less government intervention is, given that Bezos’ other little project, Amazon, is facing a massive antitrust lawsuit — the trial for which is scheduled for Oct. 2026. On the other hand, The Washington Post was an outspoken critic of the government, with Trump frequently targeting Bezos personally. But in recent years, Bezos has taken a noticeably softer stance. Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, and The Post even refrained — or was prevented — from making an endorsement in the 2024 presidential race.

Bezos isn’t the only tech titan using his platform to reshape public discourse. Mark Zuckerberg is busy relocating Meta’s trust and safety teams to Texas — you know, MAGA country — while pledging to work with Donald Trump to “push back” against global censorship. Meanwhile, Elon Musk has turned Twitter into a free-for-all, where misinformation thrives. Together, these three billionaires are like the Avengers of corporate libertarianism, except they’re saving the free market — from you.