![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/09_Eoin_Photo-by-Molly-Haley-copy-e1758235751930.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nEoin Higgins is the author of \u201cOwned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voice on the Left.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Billionaire Jeff Bezos\u2019S<\/span> Washington Post on Wednesday cut one-third of its staff, including around 300 members of the newsroom<\/a>, a journalistic bloodbath that marks a shift from the \u201cDemocracy Dies in Darkness\u201d era back into darkness.<\/p>\n Defenders of the executive team\u2019s decisions<\/a> have cited<\/a> declining subscriptions and revenue as the reasons why the company needs to tighten its belt. But for Bezos, who could leverage his net worth, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of $250 billion, to run the paper at a loss for generations to come, these cuts to a trusted news organization are an ideological, rather than commercial, choice \u2014 and the Amazon founder is more responsible than anyone for the change in the Washington Post\u2019s fortunes.\u00a0<\/p>\n After promising Post employees<\/a> that he\u2019d take a hands-off approach to the newsroom and let journalists do their jobs when he bought the Post in 2013, Bezos dramatically changed course in late October 2024 when he killed the paper\u2019s planned endorsement<\/a> of Kamala Harris for president over Donald Trump. That made Bezos, and the Washington Post itself, enemies of the liberal audience the newsroom had been cultivating for a decade and beyond. More than 200,000 people canceled their subscriptions<\/a> in the wake of Bezos\u2019s intervention, a massive loss of revenue for an already struggling business.\u00a0<\/p>\n Reporters at the paper could see what was coming and appealed to readers not to punish the newsroom. \u201cPlease don\u2019t cancel your subscriptions,\u201d wrote Amanda Morris, a disability reporter who resigned from the paper last May, in a prescient post<\/a>. \u201cIt won\u2019t impact Bezos \u2014 it hurts\u00a0journalists and makes another round of layoffs more likely.\u201d<\/p>\n Morris was right. Unsubscribing has had no effect on Bezos\u2019s appeasing of Trump, and he has continued to go out of his way to flatter the 47th president. Amazon donated $1 million<\/a> to Trump\u2019s 2025 presidential inaugural committee, and Bezos attended the ceremony<\/a>, one of a murderer\u2019s row of tech billionaires<\/a> who stood near the president<\/a> on the dais in the Capitol rotunda, flanked by other Silicon Valley titans like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sundar Pichai.\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s always more than enough money to go around, except if you\u2019re a working journalist.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n One month later, in February 2025, Bezos restructured the opinion section<\/a> along explicitly ideological grounds, writing in a memo to staff: \u201cWe are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s paying off. On Monday, two days before the layoffs, the billionaire welcomed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to his Blue Origin spaceport in Florida for a mutual backslapping affair<\/a> \u2014 highlighting yet another Bezos business that\u2019s benefiting from public money in the form of a Space Force contract worth more than $2 billion<\/a>, which was announced last April. Hegseth posted<\/a> on X that the company was \u201cbuilding The Arsenal of Freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n Bezos replied<\/a> that it was a \u201chuge honor\u201d to have Trump\u2019s war chief to visit. \u201cThe whole team here was energized by your visit, and we\u2019re excited to be doing our part to bring high-tech manufacturing back to America. Thank you!\u201d he said.<\/p>\n There\u2019s always more than enough money to go around, except if you\u2019re a working journalist. Amazon\u2019s \u201cMelania<\/a>\u201d debuted on January 30, just days before the layoffs; the documentary reportedly paid<\/a> the first lady around $28 million of its $40 million budget, leading former executive Ted Hope, who helped start Amazon\u2019s film division, to wonder<\/a>: \u201cHow can it not be equated with currying favor or an outright bribe?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Washington Post isn\u2019t the only newsroom to see the right-wing politics of its owner lead to backlash and a loss of revenue followed closely by cuts. At the Los Angeles Times, a similar dynamic played out after billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong declined to allow<\/a> the paper to endorse Kamala Harris on October 22, 2024, just three days before Bezos did the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n Subscriptions dropped by the thousands, though not to the extent they did at the Post; in October 2025, as ownership sought a $500 million investment<\/a>, they reported $50 million in losses attributed primarily to the time period after the non-endorsement. The LA Times has been hit with extensive layoffs in the newsroom<\/a>, another example of employees paying the price for ownership playing at right-wing politics.\u00a0<\/p>\n This rightward turn, with job cuts framed as a necessary evil to tighten up a floundering business, was also on display at CBS News<\/a>, where Trump ally David Ellison appointed conservative ideologue Bari Weiss<\/a> to run the show after his media company Skydance bought the network last fall. One of the first orders of business was cutting staff, which came a month after the purchase.<\/p>\n In each case, the driving forces appear to be the political priorities of billionaires and their desire to avoid Trump\u2019s wrath and curry his favor \u2014 while massively benefiting their bottom line with media mergers<\/a> and lucrative government contracts<\/a>. Soon-Shiong\u2019s multibillion-dollar fortune is built on the health care industry, particularly on drugs he\u2019s developed like Anktiva, which rely on FDA approval<\/a>. Ellison is shamelessly ingratiating himself to Trump for more media merger approval<\/a>, a strategy that\u2019s working for the whole family: Patriarch Larry just led a bid<\/a> to take over American operations of TikTok<\/a> with the president\u2019s blessing.<\/p>\n Bezos in particular has an interest in keeping Trump happy. The president won\u2019t hesitate to punish enemies or the disloyal by yanking federal contracts<\/a>, and AWS, Amazon\u2019s web services division, relies on the government for billions of its annual revenue. The relationship between the White House and Amazon has already sparked outrage<\/a>, especially over AWS\u2019s contracting with ICE for more than $140 million<\/a>, but money in the bank speaks louder than protests against one of the world\u2019s largest and most ubiquitous companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n A rigorous, adversarial news media is not in the best interest of the ultra-wealthy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Amazon continues to rake in hundreds of millions annually<\/a> \u2014 at least \u2014 in federal dollars through its cloud contracts, not only for ICE, but also in agencies and departments across the government. While there\u2019s no solid number for the average annual value all these contracts amount to, it\u2019s enough that AWS was able to promise $1 billion in savings<\/a> to the federal government in 2025 through a cloud updating and consolidation deal through the end of 2028.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those staggering profits add insult to injury for Bezos\u2019 now-former employees at the Post, who could have kept their jobs in perpetuity if the billionaire valued the Fourth Estate as much as he\u2019s claimed. Former editor David Maraniss told the New Yorker<\/a> that Bezos \u201cbought the Post thinking that it would give him some gravitas and grace that he couldn\u2019t get just from billions of dollars, and then the world changed. Now I don\u2019t think \u2026 he gives a flying fuck.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
\n