from the nature-is-healing dept

Thu, Nov 12th 2026 03:50pm - Karl Bode

The Washington Post isn’t what it used to be. While the paper is still peppered with a few decent journalists trying to do good work, the outlet is being slowly strangled to death by billionaire owner Jeff Bezos, who is steadily dismantling the last vestiges of the paper’s sagging credibility in a desperate bid to mislead the public, prop up oligarch interests, and pay homage to our mad, idiot king.

There have been plenty of examples. Like that time the paper fired a cartoonist who criticized Jeff Bezos. Or that time it announced it was retooling its opinion pages so everyone is super nice to corporations, billionaires, and authoritarian assholes. Or just the general way the paper (particular its political journalism) loves to sanewash and normalize Trump’s historic corruption.

Or last year, when the paper fired its last Black opinion columnist, Karen Attiah. Her offense? She shared some of Charlie Kirk’s own racist words and expressed some personal thoughts on gun control, which Bezos’ editors lamented included some “unacceptable Bluesky posts” that criticized “white men.”

In short Attiah, who hired Saudi-murdered columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2017 and was central in shaping the former WaPo’s opinion pages, was fired for the cardinal sin of upsetting thin-skinned Republicans and racist rich people. Attiah sued, and won, the arbitrator in the case ruling that the Post’s management’s decision wasn’t based on any actual, meaningful offense whatsoever.

Amusingly, Attiah outlasted both of the Murdoch-orbit editors at the paper (Adam O’Neill and Will Lewis) responsible for her firing. This week she announced that while she could technically have her job back, she wouldn’t be returning to the paper:

“My arbitration win was a monumental victory for unions, for journalists, and for free speech. As the last full-time Black columnist in the Opinions section, I recognized how important the win was for Black journalists, especially those pushed out of newsrooms in recent years.

While I remain proud of the victory, I came to the painful realization that returning to The Washington Post meant coming back without the guaranteed freedom and institutional support to do what I loved: use my voice, seek truth, and serve readers.”

Nature is healing!

Attiah’s firing came last year amidst a backdrop of “free speech loving” MAGA authoritarians desperately trying to cancel anybody who didn’t engage in a distorted hagiography of Kirk and his work (helping rich people spread hateful and divisive internet propaganda among college kids to divide the electorate and normalize ignorance and racism).

Like so many U.S. billionaire-owned major media outlets, the Post has responded to authoritarianism with the ethical equivalent of a wet farting sound. It’s painfully demonstrated the failures of consolidated corporate media, where ownership interest in tax breaks, deregulation, and rubber-stamped merger approvals trumps any interest in objective truth or educating America’s increasingly befuddled electorate.

The extraction class wants the public fighting amongst themselves about issues like race, foundational trans rights, and candy gender; they certainly don’t want an informed electorate supporting things like making billionaires pay their fucking taxes or having competent and well-funded regulators.

So seeing an opportunity in Trumpism, all of our billionaire media owners (also see: the LA Times, Politico, and countless others) tried to reshape reality and blunt the public backlash to their abhorrent, self-serving behaviors. It’s not really working. The result has been ethical columnists and journalists going off and starting their own worker-owned independent ventures and newsletters, while establishment media continues to enthusiastically dismantle whatever was left of its sagging credibility.

Filed Under: cancelled, charlie kirk, fired, free speech, jeff bezos, karen attiah, social media
Companies: washington post