The Washington Post: kowtowing to Trump?

The newspaper's opinion editor has handed in his notice following edict from Jeff Bezos

A Washington Post logo is displayed on a smartphone device
(Image credit: ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo)

Jeff Bezos seemed the "perfect white knight" when he bought the struggling Washington Post in 2013, said Jill Abramson in The Boston Globe. The billionaire didn't even bother to negotiate over the $250 million price tag and promised to be a "hands-off" owner. For years he honoured that pledge, but shortly before the last presidential election, he badly "tarnished" the paper's reputation by spiking a Washington Post editorial endorsing Kamala Harris – a move that led to some 250,000 cancelled subscriptions. And last week Bezos went further.

In a memo to Post staff, he explained that the paper's opinion pages would henceforth consistently champion "personal liberties and free markets". "We'll cover other topics too of course," he wrote, "but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others." The Post's opinion editor, David Shipley, promptly resigned over the edict.

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