Jeff Bezos’s stewardship of the Washington Post has been described as a shameful example of how private interest can eclipse the public good. The Amazon founder, once celebrated as a symbol of the internet, now represents how the ultra-rich can undermine journalism. Last week’s brutal cull of hundreds of journalists at the Post marked a new low, with redundancies announced on a video call and half of its foreign bureau axed, including the war reporter in Ukraine. Former Post stalwart Paul Farhi called it “the biggest one-day wipeout of journalists in a generation”.
The reasons behind the cuts remain baffling. Marty Baron, the Post’s former editor, highlighted Bezos’s “sickening” efforts to curry favour with Donald Trump, describing it as a “case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction”. Slate magazine, owned by the Graham family (previous owners of the Post), accused Bezos of “accelerating the [Post’s] decline on purpose” due to “external economic interests” such as Amazon and Blue Origin. Bezos’s ownership underscores that owning a newspaper is not about money but power and influence.
Bezos, with a $266bn fortune, does not need the Post’s revenue; its $100m annual losses are a rounding error. When he bought the paper in 2013, he spent generously on reporters and used his private jet to free journalist Jason Rezaian from an Iranian jail. However, during Trump’s first term, Amazon lost a $10bn government contract, and a lawsuit blamed “improper pressure from President Donald J Trump”. The Post’s recent troubles culminated in 2024 when Bezos appointed British journalist Will Lewis as publisher, pulled the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, and insisted on a more free market-friendly opinion section, leading to nearly 250,000 subscribers leaving.
The debacle illustrates that uber-wealthy owners often put private greed above the public good. As editor Tina Brown remarked, “The purpose of having fuck-you money is to say fuck you, but it seems the purpose of fuck-you money is to have more fuck-you money.” If a newspaper hurts that goal, it is either killed or left to fade into irrelevance. Alternatives have been suggested, such as Bezos’s ex-wife MacKenzie Scott partnering with other billionaires’ ex-wives to support the Post, but a more viable solution remains elusive.
