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Bezos-Owned Washington Post Caught Omitting Amazon Conflicts of Interest in Editorials
"The Post’s opinion section, which owners traditionally consider their very own plaything, is a lost cause," said one critic.
Oct 28, 2025
Veteran reporters, journalism professors, and former Washington Post staffers are among those raising alarm over the respected newspaper's increasingly common publication of editorials that directly support the business interests of its owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, without disclosing potential conflicts of interest.
NPR reported on Tuesday that at least three editorials published by the paper over the last two weeks have weighed in "on matters in which Bezos has a financial or corporate interest without noting his stake," and in which "the Post's official editorial line landed in sync with its owner's financial interests."
The most recent example came when the Post published an editorial defending President Donald Trump's widely criticized ballroom construction project, which involved the demolition of the East Wing of the White House and which apparently didn't go through any regulatory approval process.
The editorial initially failed to mention that Amazon was one of several corporate donors that funded the demolition of the East Wing.
What's more, the paper only added an acknowledgement of the Amazon donation after its absence was flagged by Columbia Journalism School professor Bill Grueskin, who noted in a Bluesky post that the Post slipped in the acknowledgment with "no clarification or correction appended to the piece."
The editorial about the East Wing's destruction was also the subject of a scathing analysis by former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan, who similarly called out Amazon's donation to the ballroom project and described the paper's editorial on the demolition "both sad and shameful."
Although Sullivan still had praise for the paper's news reporting team, she concluded that "the Post’s opinion section, which owners traditionally consider their very own plaything, is a lost cause, at least for now."
In addition to the editorial about the East Wing demolition, NPR singled out a recent Post editorial praising the US military's push to develop smaller nuclear reactors, and an editorial that pushed for Washington, DC to speed up the approval of self-driving cars.
Amazon purchased a stake in the company X-energy to develop small nuclear reactors to power data centers in 2024, and the company's self-driving car subsidiary, Zoox, announced it would begin operating in DC just three weeks before the Post ran its editorial.
Ruth Marcus, a former deputy editorial page editor at the Washington Post, told NPR that she had always insisted on disclosing potential conflicts of interest during her tenure at the paper.
"It strikes me that the failure to do this [disclosure] is concerning—whether out of negligence or worse," she said. "I think telling your readers that there might be a conflict in whatever they're reading is always important. It's a lot more important when it involves whoever the owner is."
The Post over the last year has seen a mass exodus of talent from its editorial pages, as multiple longtime columnists and contributors have taken jobs with other publications or have become their own independent publishers. The Post's former opinion editor, David Shipley, resigned this past February just as Bezos decreed that the paper would should the focus of its editorials to "personal liberties and free markets."
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'Wildly Corrupt': Trump Favors Rich Pal to Buy One of World's Largest Media Companies
If the Trump administration gets its way, "one giant company could control almost everything you watch on TV," warned Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Oct 24, 2025
The Trump administration reportedly wants a rich friend of the president, Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN, HBO, and other major media organizations.
David Ellison is the son of Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, one of the richest men in the world and a Republican megadonor. Under the younger Ellison's leadership, Skydance recently scored a regulatory green light from the Trump administration to merge with Paramount. Federal approval of the deal was widely seen as a corrupt reward for Paramount's decision to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit that President Donald Trump filed last year against the CBS parent company.
"They're friends of mine. They're big supporters of mine. And they'll do the right thing," Trump said of the Ellisons earlier this month, declaring that CBS has "great potential" under new leadership. CBS has already taken several steps to appease the president.
Now, the Trump administration reportedly favors the newly formed media behemoth, Paramount Skydance, to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, which publicly announced earlier this week that it is seeking bids.
The New York Post reported Thursday that Paramount Skydance is "clearly in the catbird seat." Citing an unnamed government official with direct knowledge of the matter, the Post reported that "a number of rival bidders are likely to face stiff hurdles from US regulators in the blockbuster auction."
Paramount Skydance has so far made several offers to Warner Bros. Discovery, all of which were rejected as insufficient.
But Ellison appears confident that his firm will ultimately acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, given his personal relationship with Trump. According to CNN, "Ellison's allies are privately arguing that he is the only buyer who would pass muster with Trump administration regulators."
"Privately, Ellison is exuding the kind of confidence that comes from having tens of billions in cash," CNN reported. "His ambitions are bolstered by his father, Larry Ellison, Oracle's executive chairman, who currently ranks as the second-richest man in the world. Together they are 'building an unprecedented media empire,' as The Washington Post put it earlier this month."
Watchdogs and Democratic lawmakers have voiced alarm over Ellison's efforts. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) warned earlier this week that if Paramount Skydance ultimately purchases Warner Bros. Discovery, "one giant company could control almost everything you watch on TV."
Matt Stoller, director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project, called the Trump administration's reported position on Ellison's bid for Warner Bros. Discovery "wildly corrupt."
The New York Times notes that the potential merger "would combine two of the largest Hollywood studios, Warner Bros. and Paramount, granting huge clout at the box office and putting CNN and CBS News under the same corporate umbrella, which would give the new company enormous sway over the news industry."
"It would combine Paramount+ and HBO Max, two of the biggest streaming services, bringing the company's movies and shows into hundreds of millions of living rooms," the Times added.
The Writers Guild of America, a labor union that represents TV and news writers, spoke out forcefully against the possibility of a Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. merger on Thursday, saying in a statement that "merger after merger in the media industry has harmed workers, diminished competition and free speech, and wasted hundreds of billions of dollars better invested in organic growth."
“At a time when the country demands, and needs, the broadest possible set of views and stories and voices," the union said, "we have handed over the keys to the media kingdom to giants whose sole motivation is to maximize their short-term investment return, not to inform or enlighten or entertain."
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Allies Challenge Corporate Media Onslaught Against Working-Class Champion Graham Platner
"The reason anyone pretends to care about Platner's tattoo and Reddit posts is because they think he's coming after the rich. That's it. That's all it's about."
Oct 22, 2025
US Sen. Bernie Sanders was among the progressives voicing continued support for working-class Senate candidate Graham Platner as he faces a relentless onslaught of negative corporate media attention over his past online posts and a tattoo he says was a drunken mistake that has now been covered with fresh ink.
"He went through a dark period," Sanders (I-Vt.), Platner's most prominent supporter, said Tuesday. "He's not the only one in America who has gone through a dark period. People go through that, he has apologized for the stupid remarks, the hurtful remarks that he made, and I'm confident that he's going to run a great campaign and that he's going to win."
The firestorm began last week, when CNN published a story featuring deleted Reddit posts in which Platner—who is running to unseat Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine)—called himself a "communist," castigated police, downplayed sexual assault in the military, and asked, "Why don't black people tip?"
Platner, who launched his campaign in August with a fiery anti-oligarchy message, has addressed the resurfaced posts head-on, saying they reflect a period of his life in which he was angry, depressed, less knowledgeable, and disillusioned from eight years of service in the US military. Platner said he has since evolved personally and politically, recognizing today that many of his past comments were abhorrent.
"I don't want people to judge me off the dumbest thing I said on the Internet 12 years ago," the Senate hopeful, now 41, said in a statement regarding the Reddit posts, which he deleted ahead of his campaign launch. "I would like people to engage with who I am today."
Allies of Platner, including US Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), came to his defense, accusing the Democratic Party establishment of trying to undermine him for the benefit of its preferred candidate in the race, Maine Gov. Janet Mills—who announced her bid for Collins' Senate seat a day before the CNN story broke.
"I respect Platner's journey and the man he is today. I reject the politics of personal destruction," Khanna wrote on social media. "I stand by my endorsement. I won't cower to the establishment."
pic.twitter.com/fPnFgpD54T
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) October 17, 2025
But with the ink hardly dry on news stories plumbing Platner's social media history, the candidate is now facing fresh uproar over a chest tattoo he got 18 years ago in Croatia while "very inebriated" with fellow Marines.
On Platner's account, the tattoo—which resembles Nazi iconography—was an ignorant mistake, not an expression of affinity for Nazism or antisemitism, of which he said he is a "lifelong opponent." Platner has since had the tattoo covered with "some kind of Celtic knot with a dog on it," he told Vanity Fair on Wednesday.
Platner discussed the tattoo at length in an interview on "Pod Save America," saying he decided to address it publicly after he "got wind that in the opposition research, somebody was shopping the idea that I was a secret Nazi with a hidden Nazi tattoo."
"We chose a terrifying-looking skull and crossbones off the wall because we were Marines and, you know, skulls and crossbones are a standard military thing," he said.
"At no point in this entire experience of my life did anybody ever once say, 'Hey, you're a Nazi,'" Platner added.
In the early stages of his campaign, Platner has spoken out forcefully against what he's called the "right-wing populism" of figures like President Donald Trump, saying it "otherizes people" and wields bigotry as a tool to divide the working class while continuing to redistribute wealth to the oligarchs on top.
"I think we live in a world that is shaped by policy," Platner told MSNBC's Chris Hayes last month. "I don't think it has to be like this. All the outcomes we have are the outcomes of policy decisions that we choose to enforce or not enforce."
"And when you start asking, well, like what other questions you'd have to ask to get the outcomes we have currently, the answer starts to mostly look like we're just figuring out how to steal as much money and time from working people and give it to the ultra-wealthy," he continued. "And that's pretty much where I've landed."
Platner has also been highly critical of the Democratic establishment, condemning the party's support for Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza and failure to sufficiently counter the fascistic Trump administration.
"Nothing pisses me off more than getting a fundraising text from Democrats talking about how they're fighting fascism," he wrote on social media in August, shortly after launching his campaign. "It's such bullshit. We're not idiots. Everyone knows most of them aren’t doing jack shit right now to fight back."
"This is a crucial moment for the Democratic Party. If they decide that normal people with some small skeletons in their closet (or inked on their chest) are not welcome, they are finished."
Some argued the fierceness of the backlash against Platner stems from the anti-oligarchy messaging that he's made central to his campaign.
"The reason anyone pretends to care about Platner's tattoo and Reddit posts is because they think he's coming after the rich. That's it. That's all it's about," wrote Matt Stoller, author of the anti-monopoly newsletter, BIG. "They hate populists because we actually believe in equality and that terrifies them."
Others voiced concern about the possible chilling effect that attacks on Platner could have on future progressive political candidates, particularly if he's forced out of the race.
"Censorious, hall monitor liberalism that refuses to accept growth in people—unless you're a corporate centrist and all is forgiven, just ask [Andrew] Cuomo supporters—is far more of a threat to the Democratic Party's chances in the future than anything dug up on Graham Platner," wrote Emma Vigeland, co-host of the progressive political talk show "Majority Report."
Drop Site's Ryan Grim similarly argued that "this is a crucial moment for the Democratic Party."
"If they decide that normal people with some small skeletons in their closet (or inked on their chest) are not welcome, they are finished," Grim wrote. "Because they've tried the other way and it didn't work."
Platner has signaled that he has no intention of exiting the race, telling Semafor that his campaign has $400,000 in recurring monthly donations—a figure that he said did not dip following the resurfacing of his old Reddit posts.
This story has been updated to reflect that Matt Stoller wrote his social media post in his personal capacity.
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