Senior columnist and editor at the Washington Post Ruth Marcus resigned on Monday, claiming in her resignation letter that the paper’s CEO, William Lewis, refused to publish her last piece in order to conform with an editorial edict issued by the Post’s owner, Silicon Valley billionaire Jeff Bezos.
In a post published on X from February 26th, Bezos shared a note circulated with the Washington Post team in which he called for a change in the opinion pages. “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” the Amazon founder wrote. “I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion.” Bezos also minimized the opinion section’s traditional role of providing a variety of viewpoints, saying that “today, the internet does that job.” The change in policy led to the departure of the Post’s editorial page editor, David Shipley. More than 75,000 digital subscriptions were canceled in the two days following Bezos’ announcement.
In Ruth Marcus’ resignation letter addressed to Bezos and Lewis, which was shared with the New York Times, she alluded to this edict from the newspaper’s owner as highly problematic. “Jeff’s announcement that the opinion section will henceforth not publish views that deviate from the pillars of individual liberties and free markets threatens to break the trust of readers that columnists are writing what they believe, not what the owner has deemed acceptable,” she wrote. She then stated that William Lewis’ refusal to run her last column, which was critical of Bezos’ policy, “underscores that the traditional freedom of columnists to select the topics they wish to address and say what they think has been dangerously eroded.” Marcus, who had been with the paper sine 1984, emphasized that Lewis’ refusal to publish her column was “something [she had] not experienced in almost two decades of column-writing.”
Jeff Bezos, who at various points has been estimated to be the richest man in the world, bought the Washington Post in 2013 for $100 million from former publisher Donald Graham. While there were few signs of editorial intrusion from Bezos in the years that followed – CNN even credited him with making the publication profitable again and boosting online traffic – since last year, the logistics magnate has taken a more direct, and at times contentious, role in managing the paper more closely. The hiring of William Lewis as CEO last summer caused an internal uproar at the paper due to his previous work, including his involvement in the British tabloid News of the World’s phone hacking scandal. In October of last year, Bezos killed a piece endorsing Kamala Harris for president, a move which led to 300,000 subscription cancellations.
