Washington Post columnist quits and accuses writer of killing op-ed essential of Jeff Bezos | EUROtoday

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Longtime Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus submitted her resignation on Monday after an op-ed she wrote disagreeing with proprietor Jeff Bezos’ new mandate for the storied paper’s opinion web page was rejected by the Post’s writer.

Marcus — who has been with the Post since 1984 as an editor, reporter and columnist — despatched her resignation letter to each Bezos and writer Will Lewis, telling them that she had by no means encountered certainly one of her items being rejected in her almost 20 years of column-writing. The letter was first reported by The New York Times.

As of publication, no communication of Marcus’ resignation had been despatched to the Post newsroom, in response to inside sources. A spokesperson for the paper didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

Marcus quitting the Post after greater than 4 many years with the publication comes roughly every week after the paper’s mega-billionaire proprietor sparked outrage among the many paper’s workers and subscription base when he handed down a brand new path for the Post’s opinion web page.

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“We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” Bezos famous in his memo to workers. “We’ll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”

The Amazon founder additionally revealed that opinion editor David Shipley had determined to step down slightly than embrace Bezos’ new edict. “I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t ‘hell yes,’ then it had to be ‘no.’ After careful consideration, David decided to step away,” Bezos acknowledged. “This is a significant shift, it won’t be easy, and it will require 100 per cent commitment — I respect his decision.”

In her resignation letter, Marcus wrote that she “cherished my four decades at the Post” and acknowledged that as an opinion author, she had been “honored to offer commentary that readers could be assured constituted my best independent judgment of the topic at hand.” Lewis’ rejection of her newest op-ed that denounced Bezos’ new opinion coverage, nevertheless, was a bridge too far.

“Unfortunately, on the opinions side of the newspaper, that appears to be no longer the case,” Marcus wrote. “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 trust of readers that columnists are writing what they believe, not what the owner has deemed acceptable.”

She continued: “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.”

She concluded her letter to the Post’s proprietor and writer by telling them “it breaks my heart to conclude that I must leave,” including that she had the “deepest affection and admiration” for her colleagues and wished them “the best as you steer this storied and critical institution through troubled times.”

Bezos’ latest mandate comes after the Blue Origin proprietor has confronted warmth from each the newsroom and readers from seemingly cozying as much as President Donald Trump and pushing the paper right into a extra conservative path. His choice to scuttle the publication’s endorsement of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris simply days earlier than the 2024 election resulted in editorial board members resigning and roughly a quarter-million canceled subscriptions.

Amid extra considerations over Bezos’ editorial meddling and more and more shut relationship with the media-hating president, the paper has seen an exodus of expertise from each the information and opinion facet. The newsroom has additionally begged Bezos to come back and personally converse to the Post’s journalists about his imaginative and prescient, to no avail.

Following Bezos’ newest edict, which has been met with approval from MAGA and Trump, NPR reported that a further 75,000 readers canceled their digital subscriptions to the paper.