More than 75,000 digital subscribers have canceled their reconciliations in The Washington Post after a notice from its owner, Jeff Bezos, that the letter opinion section would be rebuilt to approximate the libertarian ideals seeking “personal freedoms” and “free markets”, according to a report.
The decision, which Bezos announced on Wednesday, caused immediate unrest within the organization, including the resignation of the opinion editor David Shipley, who had unsuccessfully tried to remove Bezos from the change.
A previous mass exodus of subscribers began in late October when Bezos reportedly blocked a planned approval of democratic President Kamala Harris.
Between this decision and the election day, over 300,000 subscribers terminated links to the post, reaching more than 12% of his digital subscribers.
Despite an aggressive impetus to attract new subscribers – adding 400,000 with deducted tariffs – the newspaper has still suffered a “net loss of several hundred thousand”, paying subscribers, reported NPR.
Many inside the news room believe that without Bezo’s interventions, the basis of the paper subscribers would have remained significantly higher, according to national public radio, which first reported the last round of cancellations.
Shipley did not respond to requests for comment. A Washington Post spokesman refused to comment.
Bezo’s movement to fix the opinion section was the subject of a column by the Washington Post Media critic Erik Wemple, but the part was killed by editors, according to a report.
Fallout stretched beyond the news room, as the long figures associated with the post expressed their disapproval.
Associate editor David Maraniss and former executive editor Marty Baron expressed concern, with Baron describing the action as “Craven”.
In an interview with Zeteo News, Baron, who had previously praised Bezos in his 2023 memory, suggested that the billionaire was “essentially scared” of President Trump.
The number of reconciliation cancellations, first reported by the NPR, was provided by a source that demanded anonymity due to concerns about professional consequences.
The Washington Post company, citing its status as a private business, refused to comment on figures or criticisms.
Bezos told employees in a memorandum that he supported a shift to support of “personal freedoms and free markets”.
“We will cover other topics, of course,” Bezos wrote in a message to the staff, which he publicly shared on X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
“But the views that oppose those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
He argued that in the digital era, newspapers no longer need to offer a “broad -based thought section that [seeks] to cover all views. “
Inside the news room, the concerns have escalated over possible editorial intervention.
Executive editor Matt Murray tried to secure the staff, stating that he had not received any indication that Bezos intended to change the news coverage. He repeated this position in a memorandum for employees, encouraging them to continue to report “without fear or favor”, according to NPR.
Bezos defended his editorial decisions, in particular the refusal of Harris’s approval, claiming he was seeking to strengthen the newspaper’s credibility between the general public.
“Most people believe the media is biased,” he wrote in an OP-ED.
“Whoever does not see this is paying little attention to reality, and those who fight reality are lost.”
However, he also admitted that his business interests create complexes, as Amazon and Blue Origin have broad contracts with the federal government.
Given the Trump administration’s focus on reshaping government and private industry, concerns about conflicts of interest have emerged.
“You can see my wealth and business interests as an attack against intimidation, or you can see them as a network of interests in opposition. Only my principles can give balance from one to another,” Bezos wrote in October.
Since then, he has donated $ 1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and has participated in the president’s oath along with other technology executives. Trump later discovered that he had dinner with Bezos on Wednesday night.
The developing relationship between Bezos and Trump has unstable mail workers, with some choosing to express their opposition publicly.
In January, Shipley rejected a political cartoon from Pulitzer pricing Ann Telnaes, who described Bezos and other technology moguls that capture for Trump.
Telnaes then resigned. The controversy about Telnaes’s departure aroused another wave of reconciliation cancellations, reportedly exceeding normal levels.
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