The Washington Post is getting bogged down, Jeff Bezos is courting

THE Washington Postlong considered one of the flagships of American media, is bogged down as its owner, Jeff Bezos, continues his controversial efforts to reconcile with the White House by supporting a costly documentary on the wife of the president of the United States.

Dozens of journalists from the daily took to social networks this week to express alarm at new cuts in their ranks while the portrait of Melania Trump was launched with great fanfare in which Amazon, the company founded by the billionaire, swallowed up more than 75 million US dollars (nearly 102 million Canadian dollars).

The first lady of the United States would have directly received nearly 30 million US dollars (around 41 million Canadian dollars) for the documentary, launched Friday in thousands of theaters and dozens of countries even if specialists expect a complete failure at the box office.

“Let’s say that it doesn’t look very good when cuts are planned at the Post. It’s in principle an investment by Amazon, but everyone considers it to be Jeff Bezos’ money,” notes Tom Jones, a media analyst attached to the Poynter Institute.

The sums injected into the documentary are likely to fuel questions about the businessman’s proximity to the American administration and his desire to direct the content of the daily newspaper so as not to displease Donald Trump, who has increased attacks against the media deemed hostile to his plans since his return to power.

Katherine Jacobsen of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) notes that it is crucial that American media owners send the message that their corporate interests do not trump their editorial independence.

Even more so, she says, in a context of democratic crisis marked by serious abuses.

Paradigm shift

Jeff Bezos was received as a “hero” by journalists from Washington Post 10 years ago, when he invested lavishly while not weighing on content, but things have changed, notes Mr. Jones.

The decision, before the 2024 presidential election, to block an editorial planned in support of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, outraged readers and led to more than 300,000 subscription cancellations, or more than 10% of the total, according to American public radio NPR.

Jeff Bezos’ presence alongside other Silicon Valley moguls at President Trump’s inauguration in January 2025 was poorly received, as was the leadership’s decision days later to block a cartoon showing the businessman and other Silicon Valley moguls kneeling offering bags of money to an oversized head of state.

A subsequent decision by Jeff Bezos to change the direction of the editorial page to prioritize the defense of “individual freedoms” and the “free market” was also received as a political gesture.

Several influential contributors chose to leave the daily while the number of opinion pieces conciliating Donald Trump’s administration increased.

Readers “betrayed”

A recent editorial unreservedly welcoming the military intervention carried out in early January in Venezuela to capture President Nicolás Maduro generated thousands of emails from readers outraged by the apparent complacency of the text and almost as many promises to unsubscribe.

Statistician and political analyst Nate Silver noted this week that the Washington PostYou saw his influence peak during Donald Trump’s first term with “aggressive” coverage of him. Many readers then felt like they had been “betrayed” by the reorientation of the editorial page, he said.

A specialist journalist from New York Times noted Friday that the new cutbacks plan drawn up by the management of Washington Post aims to focus coverage on politics and national security in hopes of making the daily newspaper profitable.

Tom Jones notes that the newspaper had lost around a hundred million dollars in 2024 and saw its situation become even more complicated with the return of Donald Trump.

Freedom of the press

The Washington daily is obviously far from being the only media to find itself in turmoil as the American government is engaged in an authoritarian shift with potential consequences for press freedom.

The Committee to Protect Journalists sounded the alarm on this subject 100 days after the president’s arrival in office, noting that the access of “vast segments of the population” to factual information from independent sources was threatened.

The violation of “norms and rules” long established in the media domain continues at a sustained speed, to the point that it is “difficult sometimes to find the words” to describe the seriousness of the situation, indicates M^me Jacobsen.

“Many people have long thought, when talking about a certain American exceptionalism, that it couldn’t happen here (…) I hope that the current events will lead to an awareness that will make it possible to make things happen,” she said.