Now-former Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, in a canceled column that led to her quitting the outlet earlier this week, wrote it was “unwise” for owner Jeff Bezos to revamp his paper’s opinion section. Her axed WaPo column instead ran on Wednesday in The New Yorker and included a lengthy breakdown of what led up to her exiting the Post, where she had worked for more than 40 years.
Marcus’ scrapped column was critical of Bezos’ recent decision to shift the opinion section to focus on “two pillars,” personal liberties and free markets.
“Bezos owns the Post, and this decree is within his prerogatives. An owner who meddles with news coverage, especially to further personal interests, is behaving unethically,” she wrote. “Shaping opinion coverage is different, and less problematic. But narrowing the range of acceptable opinions is an unwise course, one that disserves and underestimates our readers.”
Marcus said this new vision was in conflict with the opinion section’s previous goal — “consciously and assertively” presenting readers “with a range of views.”
She also asked whether her opinions meshed with Bezos’ two pillars. Marcus said she is “devoted” to free markets, but also believes in “the role of government in preserving competition in those markets.” And on personal liberties, she said her urge for “reasonable regulation” on guns could be seen by others as an infringement on the Second Amendment.
“Which point of view passes the ‘personal liberties’ test?” Marcus asked.
She concluded her piece by saying that Bezos added “complexity” to the paper “in the midst of Trump’s assault on democracy.”
Not everyone is upset with Bezos’ recent changes to the Post, however. Marcus’ spiked column was published a day after White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt commended the paper for “overhauling” its newsroom.
Marcus, before exiting the Post, criticized Bezos’ decision to cancel the WaPo editorial board’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris leading up to the 2024 election. Following the election, Bezos said it was the “right decision” to not endorse a candidate. If the editorial board had endorsed Harris, he noted, it would have added a “perception of bias” to the paper’s coverage.
On Wednesday, Marcus added another critique of Bezos: she was not a fan of him appearing alongside other tech executives at President Trump’s inauguration in January. She said it was “inappropriate” for Bezos to have “conveyed a message of support for Trump.”
