The Bezos Post Editorial Page Has Become a Mouthpiece for Pro-Billionaire Propaganda

Jeff Bezos said The Washington Post would no longer publish opinion pieces critical of free markets. Recent editorials show just how seriously the paper has taken this mandate.

By Nathan Robinson, The Nation

During his first 10 years as the owner of The Washington Post, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos reportedly took a fairly hands-off approach to managing the paper, with the Columbia Journalism Review observing that he was “not inclined to spend his time on the phone haranguing Post editors about coverage decisions.” But that was then. Last year, Bezos publicly announced that there would be “a change coming to our opinion pages,” and that henceforth “we are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.” Viewpoints critical of these “pillars,” he said, would no longer be appearing in the Post.

A review of editorial board output over the last year shows the fruits of that policy. The paper, previously known as center-left, has become as hard-right on economics as The Wall Street Journal. In the last year, the Post editorial board has published editorial after editorial opposing greater taxation of the rich. The Post has weighed in on tax policy everywhere from Switzerland to Seattle, lambasting every attempt to reduce the grotesque inequality of our times. Washington State’s income tax on millionaires, for instance, is “ sabotage” and a “money grab.” Almost no tax on the rich around the world escapes the paper’s notice—one might wonder why capital gains taxes in the Netherlands are a priority for a DC paper.

Recent Post editorials have also opposed minimum wage increases, tenant protections, social housing, rent control, free buses, caps on credit card interest rates, caps on the prices of staple foods, congestion pricing, and even the Railway Safety Act, introduced in response to the catastrophic 2023 chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio. Many of the articles are devoted to lambasting labor unions. For instance, the Post says public sector workers should have no right to strike, because they just “extract as much money from taxpayers as possible.” In every case, the paper repeats the usual dogmas: government ruins everything it touches, regulation is a burden on beleaguered businessmen, bureaucrats are bad and entrepreneurs are good, and so on and so forth. For the new Post, the worst thing you can be is a “ socialist” who practices “ class warfare.”