Bezos’ Calculated Destruction of The Washington Post

February 16, 2026

In early February, The Washington Post newspaper laid off more than 350 reporters, or almost half of its staff. A separate Metro news section, as well as the entire sports section and books section were eliminated. Foreign coverage was cut way back, with all but a few foreign bureaus closed, and the reporters were fired.

It was perhaps the biggest one-day wipeout of journalists in a generation. But it wasn’t the first. The Post had been cutting staff since 2021. The Washington Post, one of the most important newspapers in the country, had been turned into a mere shell of itself in a matter of a few short years.

The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, the fourth richest billionaire in the world, whose personal wealth is estimated at 261 billion dollars, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. When Bezos bought the paper in 2013, he was hailed as a savior. In those first years, he shelled out the money to increase staff by almost 85%. The Post distinguished itself with coverage of Trump’s first term under the banner “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” and subscriptions, readership and profits surged.

But Bezos was always in it for the money. For Bezos, The Washington Post was a valuable vehicle to increase his influence in the nation’s capital at a time when his businesses, including Amazon and the space company Blue Origin, sought fat government contracts and subsidies, while currying favorable treatment from government regulators.

When the political winds shifted in Trump’s favor in 2024, Bezos wrenched the Post’s editorial policy in a pro-MAGA direction. This caught the Post’s writers by surprise. Many left in protest. Others were forced out. Subscriptions and readership plunged, as did advertising revenue, which led to more staff cutbacks in a kind of death spiral.

These cuts were not at all unusual. Newspapers all throughout the country are being bought up by private-equity firms and investment groups that are essentially selling off the valuable parts. Nearly 3,500 newspapers have been shuttered and more than 270,000 newspaper jobs have been cut since 2005.

For Bezos, gutting The Washington Post corresponds with his ongoing campaign to curry favor with Trump. Bezos donated one million dollars toward Trump’s inauguration, and sat on the dais with other tech titans when Trump was sworn in. Amazon came through with a big donation to help finance the gutting of the White House East Wing and the construction of Trump’s gaudy new ballroom. And Bezos just paid 75 million dollars to a company controlled by Melania Trump for a documentary that recently premiered in theaters and will soon be shown on Prime.

Bezos didn’t utter a peep of protest when Trump began his unprecedented attacks on the press, including against Bezos’ own newspaper, where the FBI recently searched the home of a journalist and seized her phone, computer and all her files.

Bezos is just one of several pro-Trump oligarchs who now control key sections of the U.S. media. In addition to Musk’s X, which has become a platform for rampant bad information, the Ellison family now owns CBS. Larry Ellison, the second richest man in the world, is ardently pro-Trump, and CBS News has donned the kid gloves in its Trump coverage. Into that mix throw TikTok, which is now under the control of Ellison and other Trump allies. Meanwhile, Ellison’s company is fighting to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery, which owns CNN.

So, news coverage, as limited and warped as it had been, is being degraded, if not outright destroyed by the owners, in order to further their own profit, influence and power.

None of this is new or unique. As the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin wrote in the early part of the last century, “All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake ‘public opinion’ for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.”

Those words ring truer today than ever!