Democracy Dies in Deceit

Jeff Bezos may have purchased the Washington Post in 2013, but there was something he could not buy:  freedom of the press.  In taking ownership of the great newspaper in the nation’s capitol, we might have assumed that this billionaire understood his obligation to respect and protect freedom of the press, to uphold the highest journalistic standards for the Washington Post, to refrain from any interference with news coverage or editorial positions.

Unfortuately, Mr. Bezos has now apparently breached his most fundamental obligation to protect freedom of the press from any undue pressures or outside influences.  Instead, he unilaterally intervened to veto the decision of the Editorial Board to issue an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president.  His intervention is a deceitful betrayal of the obligations he assumed when he bought the newspaper to make it his first and foremost role to be the guardian of the free press.

There are reports that his decision was influenced by the fact that he has huge business interests before the government (Amazon, the space exploration company Blue Origin, among others) and he did not want to risk alienating someone who might be the future president, i.e., Donald Trump.  I have no idea if these reports are true, but the appearance of a profound conflict of interest motivating his repressive decision is out there,

Mr. Bezos is not the only wealthy titan trying to control the free press.  Another billionaire, Patrick Soon Shiong, similarly blocked a Harris endorsement by the paper he owns, the LA Times.  We are seeing billionaires try to control social media — Elon Must with X (still Twitter for many of us!), Mark Zuckerberg for Facebook and Instagram,   It’s true that very wealthy people have owned major media outlets before — the Ochs-Sulzberger family for the New York Times, the Meyers and then the Grahams for the Washington Post.  Those owners were well known for their courage in defending the free press against governmental interference.  Katharine Graham became a legend when she allowed her young reporters Woodward and Bernstein to report on the Watergate scandal even in the face of intense pressure from President Richard Nixon.  The Washington Post has fallen far and hard from those remarkable days of courageous free journalism.

Thomas Jefferson famously wrote that,  “The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Mr. Bezos and other wealthy people who own media outlets would do well to study American history and remember the importance of the free press in the formation of this republic.  Newspapers, including the Washington Post, act in service to WE THE PEOPLE, not to the government or any particular president or public official.

By repressing the right of the Washington Post editorial board to make an endorsement, Mr. Bezos has betrayed the Jeffersonian principle of the free press.  He should retract his decision and respect the decisions of the journalists who are the heart and soul of a great newspaper.