The Washington Post Surrenders — To Reality

Woke leftism is totally on the ropes.

The Democrats don’t know what to do about this, but their entire centralizing philosophy is on the ropes.

Jeff Bezos is the owner of The Washington Post. When he bought the Post, he said he would not get involved in the editorial side of the newspaper. 

Then, the newspaper decided to become the repository of the most radical woke nonsense in all of American media. By doing so, The Washington Post blew out its credibility more than any other major newspaper in the country.

It had been the paper of record. It had been the paper of Watergate. It had been the paper that broke an enormous number of serious scandals about the American government.

And then it turned into Salon.com. It was Jennifer Rubin whining about how Donald Trump was a mean, bad man. It was Eugene Robinson whining about how America was terrible. It was all the usual suspects saying the most radical, stupid things.

The number of Washington Post subscriptions began to seriously dip because they weren’t making any of the same smart business moves The New York Times was making. The New York Times also became a liberal fan paper, but they also decided to diversify into Wordle.

That did not happen with The Washington Post, who simply kept doubling down on the anti-Trump radical leftism and the suggestion that boys weren’t just girls, boys had to be girls. This had to be taught to kids — the idea that all politics could be boiled down to racial and sexual identity along with the idea that capitalism was, in and of itself, bad.

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But now there is a new middle in America, and the new middle is pro free market. It’s a middle that doesn’t like the leftist idea that the American economy is rigged on behalf of white people, rigged on behalf of men.

It’s an American middle that believes in the American dream and thus believes in the idea, generally speaking, of capitalism. It’s also an American middle that, while fairly liberal about what their neighbors do, is not completely liberal about what their neighbors do — meaning if their neighbors decide to open a porn shop next door, the answer is no. If their neighbors decide the local public school is going to be teaching gender-queer, the answer is no.

That’s the new middle in America.

So, what does that mean? It means there is now a real market possibility of newspapers like The Washington Post reorienting. Bezos is not a traditional Republican. He is not someone who believes in traditional conservative social values. He’s not somebody who, as far as I am aware, is particularly hawkish on foreign policy.

But Bezos does exist in the business world and in the world of semi-rationality. So yesterday, Bezos announced he will be reorienting (and remaking) the Post’s editorial board. It is worth sharing his statement in full:

I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning:

I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.

We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.

There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.

I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.

I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t “hell yes,” then it had to be “no.” After careful consideration, David decided to step away. This is a significant shift, it won’t be easy, and it will require 100% commitment —  I respect his decision. We’ll be searching for a new Opinion Editor to own this new direction.

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. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.

This is a sea change. It is a true recognition of the fact that The Washington Post never had a broad spectrum of opinion. The tacit recognition in Bezos’ announcement is that there might have been a time when The Washington Post was a sort of platform with a variety of opinions — Charles Krauthammer and George Mitchell used to write for The Washington Post —  but then something changed.

Once The Washington Post became the exclusive preserve of the radical Left on matters economic and social, it was no longer a platform. It became, in the most real sense, a publisher of only the content the editorial board wanted to publish.

So Bezos is now saying, “Listen, if that’s going to be the way this works, then I want the Post to publish things I want. I spent $100 million on this newspaper. I own this newspaper. I get to decide what’s in this newspaper.”

Good for him.

I think that we are exiting the era of “objective journalism” and moving toward the realization there is no such thing. The case can be made that there are journalists who do their best to remove their personal bias from situations, but the notion of there being an “objective news media” writ large was a lie and is a lie.

There’s a prism of politics through which the news is refracted at every one of these major publications. Everybody knows The Wall Street Journal editorial page tilts to the Right and The New York Times’ editorial page toward the Left.

I remember when Twitter (now X) was owned by Jack Dorsey — and when conservatives said that the standards that were being applied were unfair and that the standards Twitter professed to be applying were not actually the standards they were applying — people on the Left said, “Well, then, build your own.”

Then, Elon Musk bought it, and now the Left is whining about it.

The same is true here. When people complained about the editorial direction of The Washington Post, the Left said, “You don’t own The Washington Post. You don’t like it? Build your own.”

All of this is part and parcel of a radical sea change that is happening in American politics.

And it is driven by the Democrats, who are totally disconnected from reality.