Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has stayed noticeably silent after one of the newspaper’s reporters, Hannah Natanson, had her home searched by federal agents Wednesday—and the Post’s staff isn’t happy.
Status.news reports that several of the publication’s employees aren’t happy with their owner’s muted reaction to the raid. One called it “nauseating and irresponsible to have our owner remain silent given this unprecedented event,” while another said they were “disappointed” but “not surprised.”
“If there was a moment to stand up for our journalistic values, this would be it,” a third staffer said.
The newspaper’s executive editor, Matt Murray, forcefully condemned the search, which resulted in a phone and a smartwatch being seized from Natanson’s home.
“This extraordinary, aggressive action is deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work,” Murray wrote in an internal memo. “The Washington Post has a long history of zealous support for robust press freedoms. The entire institution stands by those freedoms and our work.”
Bezos, though, hasn’t said anything, even as the Post’s own editorial board and other publications, such as The New York Times, have spoken out. That’s possibly due to Bezos’s efforts to cozy up to President Trump in his second term, donating $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and attending the inauguration in person.
Since then, Bezos has shifted the Post’s opinion section to the right, paid $40 million to first lady Melania Trump for the rights to a documentary, and has met privately with the president multiple times. All signs point to Bezos staying silent in order to keep Trump happy and protect his billions.
Any good reporter should ditch the old institutions now. And keep their own reputation to trade on. Every last one of these institutions has capitulated completely to trump. They aren’t your friends or colleagues.
Yeah, at this point it’s nothing but another brand name bought up by the greedheads. Walk away.
I mean people have to collect a pay check to pay their bills.
Something some journalist did or is doing at one of these old institutions has gotten under their skin, and we should all be watching this very closely for signs they try to escalate against journalists.
They might be hoping people quit in fear. I say just shit on Jeff Bezos even harder than you normally would.
I hope people cancel their Amazon Prime subscriptions in masses and even better switch away from AWS. AWS is how Amazon really gets their money.
The key is the institutions aren’t really helping with that task. In fact, they’re standing aside and not fighting at all when the administration attacks their journalists.
Why should they stay there pumping bezos bucks into his vault. When they could easily publish independently nowadays and with a fraction of the readership make more money. Without having to pay for all the things that just tend to get in the way, such as upper management and owners.
Hell band together and form their own publisher if they need to. Anything but lending their reputation to these crumbling institutions, which will do nothing but soil them.
When they could easily publish independently nowadays and with a fraction of the readership make more money.
I doubt it’s at all easy to make more money as an independent blogger than as a journalist for a major newspaper.
Hell band together and form their own publisher if they need to.
They should do this, but until they do, even when the economy wasn’t being intentionally tanked by billionaire terrorists who want to replace gold with crypto, subscriber donations have never been the most steady source of income.
When most people can barely make ends meet, a steady pay check is a privilege. Drink the devil’s beer for free and steal his song.
A steady paycheck is indeed nice. But won’t do much in a gulag unfortunately.
Well true, but not having a steady pay check definitely doesn’t keep you out of the gulag.
It’s kinda weird there were/are so many people encouraging this absolutely terrible idea that people should be attempting to join ICE and just dragging their feet while collecting a paycheck as a gulag employee, who will be handed a daily list of people they are required to round up and throw in the gulag to meet their employee quota.
Vs. it somehow being more problematic to keep collecting a paycheck while potentially finding ways to sabotage the billionaire responsible for the destruction of a rapidly sinking institutional ship, which several crew members seemed to make a genuine effort to repair and preserve over the years.
Especially considering the Nazi collaborating billionaire (who definitely paid way more for the ship than he would have ever willingly paid in taxes) suddenly seemed to decide after more than a decade of mainly just insisting he be allowed to take pictures of himself posing at the helm once in a while, that he was captain and nobody would be telling him how to run his ship. Then almost immediately, he either accidentally bet on the wrong horse, or, he intentionally steered the ship directly into an iceberg (on behalf of the horse).
If it wasn’t intentional, it kinda seems like he would have just dumped it/sold it to the highest bidder already, but he hasn’t for some reason. It’s weird he’s still holding on to it since it’s not like there’s much of a need for a solidly right of center mediocre American news outlet in 2026. Almost seems like it’s more out of spite than anything else. Especially considering that historically it was seen as a trustworthy American newspaper that broke some very important stories (admittedly not a history without some questionable missteps, and odd political ties even before Trump, but that’s also true of most mainstream news).
Yeah handing over all media institutions over to government control worked well for Russia, didn’t it?
You know the internet isn’t all that difficult to control. How many tech CEOs are licking Trump’s boot right now? Jeff Bezos being among them should indicate the problems with tech, not the problems with media institutions.
And you think your shitty alt media sites couldn’t be made irrelevant by tech CEOs with just a few tweaks of the algorithms? Do you think they can’t send their government agents to wreck a small time journalist?
In the past the owner of a newspaper would stand up for journalistic freedom. This particular newspaper is owned by a big tech guy, so that isn’t happening. So your solution is to get rid of newspapers and trust in big tech more? I think the influence of big tech has you reading the situation all wrong.
“If there was a moment to stand up for our journalistic values, this would be it,” a third staffer said.
No dude that was in 2013 when he bought the Post
Bruh what fucking journalistic values? Are the journalistic values in the fucking room with us?
“If there was a moment to stand up for our journalistic values, this would be it,” a third staffer said.
That’s because he doesn’t give a shit about journalistic values.
He doesn’t give a shit about anything but himself.
I mean…, I say this with respect for the journalists, but no shit… Definitely call this shit out and don’t let it drop, but hopefully this isn’t actually a surprise
Workers of the world have not been exaggerating when they described the conditions people like Bezos expected them to work in. People die on a fairly regular basis while working in his warehouses destroying their bodies or falling victim to unsafe working conditions. And it’s all just to make one of the richest men in the world a few more pennies he won’t ever spend.
Of course he’s going to stand with his billionaire buddies when they break the law. They have each other’s backs.
That’s how class warfare works. There is no empathy or even loyalty for anyone else that isn’t one of them. He might have even offered one of his own journalists as a public sacrifice hoping to send a message and keep other journalists quiet. That’s a pretty common strategy used to intimidate workers. It means something one of you did (most likely not even the journalist who had her home searched) must have really shook these people up enough to provoke a reaction. Keep it up and keep calling them out for sticking together instead of supporting their workers. When their loyalty to each other starts to really cut into their pennies, they start looking for passive aggressive ways to turn on each other.
Fuck these people and good on you for getting under their skin.
Working for an asshole billionaire who does asshole things. I’m shocked. Shocked I say.
Sooooo, Bezos can’t be blackmailed for his marriage, what is he being blackmailed with?
He probably wasn’t blackmailed. He is greedy enough to step forward for this.
He’s an arsehole plain and simple
He lost a shit ton of money to his ex-wife and his reputation. He also ended up with batshit lady over this. I don’t think money is his only motivation.
Fucking children.
The US is comically corrupt!
