Another Dark Day at the Bezos Post: Ruth Marcus Resigns After Censorship
The billionaire squeeze tightens as another respected journalist refuses to fall in line with Bezos's rightward push.
Just two weeks after Jeff Bezos announced his "free markets and personal liberties" mandate for the Washington Post opinion section, we've got our first high-profile casualty of this rightward authoritarian shift. Ruth Marcus, a columnist and associate editor who has spent four decades at the paper, resigned today after CEO Will Lewis killed her column expressing concerns about Bezos's new editorial direction. The New York Times’ Ben Mullin seems to have been the first to report on her departure.
This is exactly the kind of thing I warned about in my coverage of Bezos's announcement. When billionaires decide their media properties should explicitly serve their personal ideologies, actual journalism gets suffocated.
In a note to her colleagues, Marcus explained:
With immense sadness I am writing to let you know that I have resigned from The Washington Post, in an email sent this morning to Jeff Bezos and Will Lewis and pasted below. I am taking this step, after more than 40 years at The Post, following Will's decision to spike a column that I wrote expressing a concern about the newly announced direction for the section and declined to discuss the decision with me. As I leave, I'd like to emphasize two things. First, how much affection and respect I have for you all, and the terrific, innovative, probing coverage you produce. Second, that my decision reflects what is the right step for me and me alone and does not suggest what anyone else should do in the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
Her resignation letter to Bezos and Lewis is a damning indictment of what's happening at the paper:
Dear Jeff and Will,
It is with great sadness that I submit my resignation as columnist and associate editor of The Washington Post. I have cherished my four decades at the Post — as a reporter, deputy national editor, editorial writer, deputy editorial page editor and columnist. As a reporter, I was honored to provide readers the truth as it could best be ascertained. As an opinion writer, was equally honored to offer commentary that readers could be assured constituted my best independent judgment of the topic at hand.
Unfortunately, on the opinions side of the newspaper, that appears to no longer be the case. Jeff's announcement that the opinion section will henceforth not publish views that deviate from the pillars of individual liberties and free markets threatens to break the truth of readers that columnists are writing what theybeieve, not what the owner has deemed acceptable. Will's decision to not run the column that I wrote respectfully dissenting from Jeff's edict — something that I have not experienced in almost two decades of column writing — underscores that the traditional freedom of columnists to select the topics they wish to address and say what they think has been dangerously eroded.
A respected journalist with 40 years at the Post wasn't allowed to express concerns about the paper's new editorial direction in the opinion section. And when her column was killed, CEO Will Lewis wouldn't even discuss it with her.
This is what happens when newspapers are run like authoritarian fiefdoms instead of journalistic institutions. First Bezos blocked the Harris endorsement, costing the paper hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Then cartoonist Ann Telnaes quit after her cartoon about billionaire media owners courting Trump was killed. Then he announced his ridiculous "free markets and personal liberties" mandate. Then editorial page editor David Shipley resigned rather than implement it. And now Ruth Marcus is out.
The message couldn't be clearer: dissent will not be tolerated at Jeff Bezos's Washington Post.
Remember all those corny "Democracy Dies in Darkness" coffee mugs and t-shirts the Post was selling during Trump's first term? The slogan now reads as unintentional irony as Bezos and Lewis systematically extinguish every source of light within their own newsroom.
This is the fundamental contradiction of billionaire-owned media. These ultra-wealthy owners claim to value press freedom while simultaneously imposing their will on the newsrooms they own. They want the prestige and influence that comes with owning respected journalistic institutions, but they can't help but bend those institutions to serve their interests and ideology.
But here's the hopeful part: journalists like Marcus and Telnaes refuse to play along. By quitting rather than compromising their principles, they're exposing the heavy-handed censorship happening behind the scenes. They're showing us that the Post's new "free markets and personal liberties" focus isn't about expanding the range of permissible opinion—it's about restricting it to views that align with Jeff Bezos's worldview.
The Post under Bezos and Lewis is becoming exactly what Eugene Meyer warned against in 1935 when he wrote that "the newspaper's duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners." That principle now hangs in the Post building as a hollow reminder of values the paper's current leadership has abandoned.
What a perfect encapsulation of our media moment: a billionaire buys a storied newspaper, blocks endorsements, mandates coverage aligned with his ideology, and then silences anyone who dares question the new direction—all while claiming to champion "personal liberties."
Not to tell anyone what to do, but if you don't support the authoritarian BS that Parker is writing about in this post, hit all these complicit companies and owners in the wallet as much as you can. Cancel your WaPo subscription, cancel Amazon Prime, and boycott both companies. It may not seem much coming from one person, but if more and more people do this, it will become a groundswell that will get noticed and need to be addressed. Unfortunately, money and profits are all these oligarchs understand.
(And please support companies who are holding fast to DEI and other similarly good values.)
Bezos has turned WaPo into the Amazon corporate newsletter. He should rename it — which of course he won’t do because that would show some minimal respect to the institution he broke.