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.
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.