Whose liberties need protecting, Jeff?
Not this shit again
Today, Jeff Bezos announced he is taking the op-ed section of the Washington Post in a new direction. In a statement posted on Elon Musk’s X, he wrote, “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.”
In response to this shift, David Shipley, the newspaper’s opinion page editor, resigned.
Post Opinions has seen a number of departures in recent months. Anti-Trump conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin left to start her own newsletter, The Contrarian. Cartoonist Ann Telnaes quit in a dustup over a cartoon showing Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Patrick Soon-Shiong, Mickey Mouse and Bezos all bowing down to a figure of Donald Trump. And several editorial board members stepped down last fall after Bezos blocked the paper from publishing a presidential endorsement.
While the Bezos/Post relationship is unique in certain ways, it’s also indicative of a shift in media coverage in the second Trump era. Since the inauguration, MSNBC’s viewership has been up 77% during prime-time hours and 34% in total day viewers. And yet, still MSNBC chose to cancel Joy Reid’s TheReidOut. This decision, while no doubt driven by financial math, is still a bad one at a time when we need diverse and principled voices more than ever.
Some friends who work at large outlets have told me that their editors are asking them to focus more on the stories of men, as if such coverage had somehow ceased to exist. As if the majority of CEOs and elected officials and media bosses were not still men.
As Rachel Maddow said on her own show this week, calling out the decisions of her own network, “This is a difficult time in the news business, but it does not need to be this difficult.”
In a country tossed into fresh chaos, with so many competing stories of loss, fear, and destruction — where park rangers and health researchers are losing their jobs; trans people’s existence is under attack; and the ability of women and poor people to access health care and simply to stay alive is ever more at risk — it’s pointed for Bezos to say he wants to focus on the freedoms of “the market.”
Personal liberties and free markets. Which personal freedoms is he referring to, exactly? Are reproductive rights and gender care personal liberties? Or are they some secret third thing?
In the cold calculations of commerce, the rights of businesses and the markets often take precedence over the human right to live. For example, it’s often more profitable for companies to pay fines for violating pollution laws than to actually stop polluting. It’s the Ford Pinto cost-benefit analysis that decides it may be less expensive to watch customers die than to make a safer product. Companies are still making these calculations. AI is sapping our water supply and harming the environment, but it’s being foisted on the consumer (a consumer that barely wants the product) to try to make a few people rich.
Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post in 2013 and has lately been taking a more active role in its management. In their time under the ownership of the world’s now second-richest man, the paper’s journalists haven’t even seen pay increases that keep up with inflation.
As Kelsey McKinney observed in 2023, “There is no ethical way to lay off your employees as a media CEO unless you yourself have cut your own fucking salary for a very long time. It's not about money. It's about control.”
It’s also ironic, because calculations like this can end up being very bad for business. Over 250,000 people canceled their subscriptions to the Post after Bezos stopped it from endorsing Kamala Harris. I can’t imagine this latest announcement will make things better. After all, if people want to subscribe to a paper that licks the bootheels of the markets, the Wall Street Journal is right there.
While the role of the opinion pages in a second Trump era is in flux, the surge in subscriptions to Wired suggests that consumers are looking for news coverage that documents the new administration honestly rather than shying away from its horrors.
When Bezos talks about liberties, he doesn’t mean our right to life, liberty and not to choke on the exhaust fumes of his billions. This is Jeff Bezos we’re talking about here.
And if he read his own paper, he’d realize it’s not the freedom of the markets that needs a vigorous defense. It’s the liberties our country was supposedly founded on.
Further reading:
Meanwhile, in rich dudes:
“Elon Musk’s business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding.”
So tired of this shit. "Oligargle my balls" said a friend of mine. Indeed.
Wired has been great! It’s one of the few outlets that’s been covering the federal government purge accurately. My guess is because they’re used to covering wonky niche stuff.
And yeah, if I wanted a trash free market shilling op-ed page, I’d resubscribe to the WSJ. Is there really a dearth of columns covering the benefits of the free market? FFS.
What gets me with these oligarchs is that if I had all their money, the last thing I’d be doing is camping out at OPM or running a newspaper op-ed page. Some days, the only solace I get is knowing that these men will eventually be relegated to the dustbin of history as they have done little to better society.