Bezos muzzles WP editorials

The Washington Post's editorial page veers right on the orders of owner Jeff Bezos, and its editor David Shipley resigns in protest. President Donald Trump threatens lawsuits against deep throats, while the White House, having declared war on the AP for refusing to use the expression Gulf of America, reserves the right to decide which newspapers will have the "honor" of entering the pools. In Trump 2.0, the clash over press freedom in America has already reached its peak.

“A big part of America’s success is economic freedom and everything else,” Bezos proclaimed, muzzling the editorial page of the Watergate newspaper, which from now on, by his order, will write only about “personal freedom and free markets.”

In 2013, when he bought the Washington Post for $250 million, Bezos explicitly said he would not interfere with its editorial line. Today, the Amazon boss has given Shipley an ultimatum: accept the new course "one hundred percent" or leave.

After navigating the double censorship of the editorial to Kamala Harris in October, which was cancelled by diktat of Bezos himself, and then in January of a cartoon by Pulitzer Prize winner Ann Telnaes with tech tycoons kneeling under a statue of Trump, Shipley this time preferred to leave.

Like many tech moguls, Bezos has warmed to Trump since the election. And the Trump 2.0 White House has made no secret from day one of its desire to exercise iron control over the press, in revenge for what the president calls "incompetent and left-wing" coverage by the mainstream media, while the White House has expanded access to new voices - influencers, podcasters, websites - favoring those in the Maga area.

In his first term, Trump spoke of journalists from traditional media outlets and networks (excluding Fox) as "enemies of the people": the amateur video in which he knocked out CNN on the edge of a ring is famous. Now, however, rhetoric has been turned into action. There are lawsuits underway (among the targets of the last election campaign, ABC preferred to settle for 15 million dollars while CBS seems intent on following suit) and others threatened against anonymous sources: such as those used by journalist Michael Wolff in his new book 'All or Nothing' on the 2024 campaign in which he says, among other things, that "Melania hates Trump".

Finally, the blacklists: with AP reporters blacklisted and the announcement that the White House will choose one by one the reporters who will follow Trump into the Oval Office and on Air Force One. A double move that has sparked protests, not only from the White House Correspondents Association, but also from reporters from Newsmax and Fox: "With a Democratic change of guard, we could end up like that," said Jacqui Heinrich, a veteran for Rupert Murdoch's network, warning the White House from the right not to create precedents.