THE Washington Post reportedly lost 75,000 digital subscribers last week after owner Jeff Bezos’ note announcing changes to his newspaper’s opinion pages. Opinions editor David Shipley immediately resigned after Bezos said he only wanted the paper to publish op-eds that promoted ‘personal liberties’ and ‘a free market’. Last year, the paper reportedly lost 300,000 subscriptions when Bezos withdrew the paper’s en­­d­orsement of Kamala Harris as president.

This is a far cry from 2016, when the paper adopted the rather cringe-worthy motto ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’ and took an aggressive stance against Donald Trump. The paper’s opinion pages, which function separately from the news pages, took an adversarial position against Trump and profited from that. Most media commentators in the US say the paper produced stellar journalism “that illuminated the depths of Trump’s self-dealing”, wrote Slate. To be fair, Bezos profited from the paper’s then strategy.

A lot of things are unclear now, from what democracy will look like in the US under a second Trump era to the fate of left-leaning writers at the Washington Post whose owner seems to be pulling the plug on its motto.

However, what is clear is that Bezos feels differently now. Opinions that oppose “[libertarian] pillars will be left to be published by others”, he wrote. How does it serve audiences if they’re only reading opinions that adhere to Bezos’ beliefs? The billionaire believes that in the age of the internet, there’s no need for newspapers to have “broad-based opinion sections that [seek] to cover all views”.

Few are buying it. And that is because Bezos is a businessman whose interest is to make more money, even if it means moving away from the core purpose of journalism, which is to inform the public. When he bought the paper in 2013, “the Post went from hemorrhaging advertising revenue to becoming a profitable business in 2016”, wrote CNN in 2019, “and continuing to be profitable not just in 2017, but also in 2018”.

Money really will buy you influence.

However, the paper had lost 50 per cent of its audience in 2020 — ostensibly because democracy was not dying in darkness under Joe Biden — and then in 2023, losses of $77 million. It began culling jobs, which, of course, impacted the journalism the paper had come to be associated with. Bezos also made bad management decisions last year in the hope that the paper’s financial misfortunes would turn around. They did not. Early this year, New York Times reported the Post was considering changing its motto to ‘Riveting Storytelling for All of America’.

The ‘all’ is probably a nod to Trump and his supporters, who have not received favourable coverage. I don’t know if changing the motto will convince MAGA supporters that the Post is now their paper of record. It’s hard to imagine that Bezos went from championing independent journalism at his paper to suddenly writing memos on what constitutes opinion in his pages because he loves Trump. I think he knows what will happen if he doesn’t do so. Trump has been clear about how he plans to restructure the government and even the private industry. Bezos has a lot of business interests and cannot afford to lose government contracts.

One look at how Bezos has been cosying up to President Trump and you get the full picture. Trump hailed Bezos’ decision not to endorse a presidential candidate last year.

Amazon, which is owned by Bezos, gave $1m to Trump’s inaugural fund in Dece­mber last year. He, along with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla’s Elon Musk and Open AI’s Sam Altman were also reported to have don­­a­ted to that fund. It explains their prominence at his inauguration in January. A few days before his an­­no­uncement about the op­­inion pages policy, he had dinner with Trump.

Money really will buy you influence. That’s stating the obvious. And should be a reality check for those who think billionaires owning news media is a good idea. In Pakistan, businessmen invest in channels and use it to win favours — all at the cost of journalism.

None of us here believe that media owners don’t bear any influence on their papers. If you’re lucky, some exert less influence than others and you have a newspaper product that holds the powerful to account.

The award-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes quit the Post after a critical cartoon showing powerful businessmen, including Bezos, bowing to Trump was rejected at the paper. She was right when she said: “Of course these are businesses, and I understand that. But they own a newspaper and they have an obligation, frankly, to protect the free press.”

We live in a time where fake news is rewarded, it is monetised, it is preferred. A free press is essential all over the world, especially when trust in media is on the rapid decline. The answers lie in robust public media which serves the people first.

The writer is a journalism instructor.

X: @LedeingLady

Published in Dawn, March 9th, 2025