Is Jeff Bezos going to destroy the Washington Post? It sure looks like it; The Guardian, February 2, 2026

 Margaret Sullivan, The Guardian; Is Jeff Bezos going to destroy the Washington Post? It sure looks like it

"The turn began in earnest when Bezos – apparently trying to protect his other commercial interests – spiked the draft of an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris for president. Whatever one thinks about endorsement editorials, the timing was terrible; it was the 11th hour, shortly before the 2024 election.

Unsurprisingly, droves of Post subscribers canceled. They were disgusted by the apparent effort to please Donald Trump at the price of editorial independence.

Later, even more subscribers decamped after Bezos made it clear that he wanted its opinion section to take a sharp right turn. Some of the nation’s best columnists departed, and a fine cartoonist, Ann Telnaes, left after she tried to publish a cartoon depicting Bezos and others of his ilk cozying up to Trump. On the news side, many of the paper’s star reporters and editors left for places like the Atlantic, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Since then, Bezos only continued down this misbegotten path, with Amazon contributing to the Trump inauguration and putting a ridiculous $40m behind a regrettable Melania Trump documentary that is leaving seats empty in a theater near you."