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The Washington Post’s Freedom Turn
Owner Jeff Bezos says he wants the paper to stand for ‘free markets.’
By The Editorial Board, WSJ
Feb. 26, 2025 5:25 pm ET
Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos Photo: evelyn hockstein/Reuters
These columns don’t usually comment on the business decisions of competitors, but Wednesday’s news from the Washington Post cuts close to home. To wit, Post owner Jeff Bezos announced that the paper’s opinion section is making a turn to stand for, well, what we do.
“I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages,” Mr. Bezos wrote on X.com. “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.” He announced that editor David Shipley had been offered the chance to lead this change, but he declined and will resign.
Good show all around here—to Mr. Shipley for resigning when he couldn’t in good conscience follow the owner’s direction. And to Mr. Bezos for being forthright in announcing the direction he wants his publication to take.
This will be a notable shift for the Post, which for decades has been a center-left publication. On economics in particular, the venerable George Will is its only clear free-market voice. Like every other major publication—the New York Times, Financial Times, Bloomberg, Politico, Axios—the Post has kicked like the Rockettes in the same ideological direction.
It’s especially striking to see that Mr. Bezos’s “personal liberties and free markets” focus sounds like our own longstanding motto: “free markets and free people.”
We welcome the intellectual company. These days it can be lonely as a rare voice for free speech and economic liberty. Political and media fashion has shifted toward industrial policy and income redistribution, and even the Republican Party has too often come to favor government intervention in economic decisions between consenting adults.
We’ll see if Mr. Bezos’s turn signals a larger change in the battle of ideas. But it will be good to have a wingman in the fight. As for our discerning readers, our respectful counsel is: Accept no substitutes. Sample the competition but come back for the real thing.
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