Introducing: Jeff Bezos' Personal Opinion Section in the WaPo

And Other U.S. Media Stories I'm Watching

👑 There’s often overlap in my interests in royal reporting in the U.K. and political reporting in the U.S. As I sat down to write this pre-coffee Substack, all I could think of was what Prince Harry said in one of his court filings against one of the publishing giants in the U.K. He said—and I’m paraphrasing—a free and fair press is the cornerstone of any healthy country.

It’s been a horrific week for the bedrock of our democracy.

📝 The White House’s barring of the AP—an international wire, mind you—for their refusal to update their style guide to include ‘Gulf of America’ was a test. (It’s worth repeating that the U.S. doesn’t own the Gulf and has no basis for up and changing its name.) A test that received little to no pushback from other outlets collectively speaking. One of the worst explanations came from Axios when they tweeted:

Will Axios be able to provide ‘clinical, fact-based reporting’ now that the White House has announced they will determine who is in the White House Press Pool—breaking with a longstanding precedent? “A select group of DC-based journalists should no longer have a monopoly over the privilege of press access at the White House,” White House Press Secretary who was introduced to her decades older husband by MATT GAETZ, announced Tuesday. It’s the anti-elite language familiar to the alt-right wrapped around a blatantly fascist move. This isn’t about what’s equitable, it’s about control. Write the wrong thing, ask the wrong question, and you could find your press badge no longer works. Rebecca English allegedly keeping an iron-fist wrapped around the Royal Rota has nothing on this.

📝 Which is why, unsurprisingly, we are seeing pre-acquiescence from parts of legacy media. Jeff Bezos announced this week that the Opinion section of the Washington Post would now focus on the support and defense of two pillars: liberties and free markets.

Translation: You can have an opinion, if it’s the right one and it aligns with Bezos & Trump’s worldview.

The move prompted Opinion Editor David Shipley to resign and several others to speak out online. Former executive editor, Marty Baron said of the move:

“There is no doubt in my mind that he is doing this out of fear of the consequences for his other business interests, Amazon (the source of his wealth) and Blue Origin (which represents his lifelong passion for space exploration),” Baron wrote Wednesday. “He has prioritized those commercial interests over The Post, and he is betraying The Post’s longstanding principles to do so.”

How the hell am I supposed to stay on top every single cruel and incompetent action coming out of the Trump Administration? I’m not. Neither are you. I was listening to to a weekly podcast from 🪐 astrologer Chani Nicholas and she spoke about how the planets are very much in line with where we were at this time in 2017 (Trump’s 1st term, Muslim bans, etc). She emphasized that individually we can’t take this all on. The question should be: “What can we do?” What can we do as a collective?

When crackdowns on the press begin—self-censorship included—it is a terrible sign that you are on the fast track to fascism. Like when you take the wrong rails in the mine levels in Donkey Kong and catapult—sometimes deliriously confident in your choice—to a game over. Sometimes you’re lucky and a separate track awaits you under the severed one you’ve been riding.

But we can’t always assume the safety net will be there. That the guardrails of democracy will hold.

We have to do this together.

-Meredith