Former Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron skewered WaPo owner Jeff Bezos on Wednesday, saying he was “sad and disgusted” his old boss was revamping the paper’s opinion section to focus on “two pillars,” personal liberties and free markets.
“What Bezos is doing today runs counter to what he said, and actually practiced, during my tenure at The Post,” Baron told The Daily Beast. “I have always been grateful for how he stood up for The Post and an independent press against Trump’s constant threats to his business interests. Now I couldn’t be more sad and disgusted.”
Baron was the Washington Post’s executive editor from 2013 to 2021; Bezos bought the paper during Baron’s first year on the job.
The response from Baron came shortly after Bezos outlined his new vision for the WaPo opinion section on Wednesday morning.
“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,” Bezos said in a note to staff that he also shared on X.
“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,” he added. “Today, the Internet does that job.”
This was the second time Baron has criticized Bezos in the past few months. In late 2024, Baron said Bezos showed “cowardice” for his decision to scrap the WaPo editorial board’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris.
“Donald Trump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner Jeff Bezos (and others),” Baron said. “Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”
Bezos pushed back on that criticism in December, saying it was “not cowardly.” “You can’t do the wrong thing because you’re worried about bad PR,” he added.
