Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ailing.) pressed tech mogul Jeff Bezos for transparency on the Amazon founder’s alternative to change up the editorial focus of The Washington Publish’s opinion pages.
“Last week, @JeffBezos declared that the Washington Post’s opinion page would only run pieces supporting ‘personal liberties’ and ‘the free market.’ In response, I submitted a letter to the editor asking Mr. Bezos to define his terms,” Casten stated in a publish on the social platform X on Wednesday.
“In light of WaPo’s refusal to respond, I’m releasing the letter and hope Mr. Bezos sheds more light on his directive. After all, democracy dies in darkness,” he added.
Bezos stated in a be aware to Publish workers final week that they “are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.”
“We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others,” he stated.
The Publish reportedly misplaced tens of 1000’s in subscribers in a seeming response to the transfer from Bezos. NPR reported final Friday, citing inner subscriber figures, that the paper’s digital subscriber rely had dropped by 75,000 because the Bezos announcement in regards to the opinion part.
Casten’s publish on X additionally featured a screenshot of a letter to Bezos by which he pressed him on the Publish opinion pages shift.
“In light of your recent announcement that the Washington Post opinion page will only publish articles that support personal liberty and free markets, I’d like to ask for a clarification: How do you define those terms?” Casten’s letter reads.
“Surely you don’t mean the purely individual definition of personal liberty, where we are all free to do whatever we want,” he provides. “Our founders were more sophisticated than that, and after proclaiming our right to liberty as a self-evident truth, went on to create a representative democracy – not an anarchy.”
Turning to Bezos’s “free markets” remark, Casten later says Bezos most definitely “would agree that a mobster’s protection racket is not a free market, even if money is exchanged for services.”
“But what then do you make of a regulated utility monopoly that faces no competition but keeps the lights on in exchange for prices set by a local government agency?” he continued.
The Hill has reached out to the Publish for remark.
