“All the President’s Men” was on TCM the other night.  Sadly, ironically, that title would now have to include Jeff Bezos.

His latest turn toward the right, informing staff that the paper’s Opinion section would no longer offer diverse viewpoints but only those that emphasize “free markets and personal liberties” has sent shock waves not only within the fabled institution that published the Pentagon Papers and through the investigative reporting portrayed in that 1976 film brought down a president.  It has also set off alarms inside and well beyond the media bubble.

This, from the publisher who heartily approved and endorsed the paper’s masthead slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” since mid-2017.  As he told then executive editor Marty Baron, “We don’t have to be afraid of the ‘democracy’ word…it’s the thing that makes The Post unique.”

Flash forward: Bezos killed a planned editorial endorsement of Kamala Harris shortly before the election. His company gave $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration, and $40 million for an Amazon Prime “documentary” on Melania Trump, and then he stood proudly on the dais with other oligarchs during the Jan. 20 inauguration at the Capitol attacked on Jan. 6, 2021 by Trump-incited insurrectionists.

Now, here we are, one month later. In the latest chapter directly affecting The Washington Post,  the famed Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein — whose story was told in the iconic  film “All the President’s Men” — have yet to be heard from.

I worked at the paper for 34 years, from 1970 to 2004, as a reporter and editor.  I was mostly a witness to and occasionally a participant in history, from the heights of Watergate to the depths of Janet Cooke, the reporter whose made up story about an eight-year old heroin addict won the paper a Pulitzer it had to return, and for then Metro editor Woodward and the executive editor Ben Bradlee, a lasting stain on their otherwise stellar reputations.

But perhaps I can shed a little light from the more recent past. Back in 2013, shortly after Bezos bought the Washington Post from the Graham family for $250 million, I interviewed then publisher Kathy Weymouth, Kay Graham’s granddaughter, for Bethesda Magazine.  The paper had been losing money and Bezos promised a huge cash infusion to keep the place running and continue the Graham tradition of serving the public “without fear or favor.”

I asked: “What can Jeff Bezos do that the Grahams couldn’t?” She responded:

“I personally believe there’s no magic bullet. If there were, someone would’ve found it, how to transform for the digital era. But we are in a great position. We have a credible brand, deeply engaged readers, [and we] cover Washington. And now we are owned by someone with deep pockets who cares what we do and is willing to invest for the long term.”

And, she added, in what now in retrospect seems incredibly naive:

“He hasn’t yet told us what to do, not that he would. He’s buying it for all the right reasons: It’s an important institution. He said, ‘I’m an optimist by nature and, yes, I’m optimistic about the future of the Post. If not, I wouldn’t join you.’ Can he bring something to the table? He clearly does have deep pockets. By itself, that’s not enough. He is obsessively focused on the reader’s experience.”

Next question:  Have you and he discussed changes you might make under his ownership that you were unable to or didn’t make before?

“I do not anticipate any dramatic changes,” she said. “He has made it clear that he wants to build on what we do best, with a deep focus on serving our readers…[while] experimenting with new ways of presenting our journalism digitally that will create even more compelling experiences for our readers and users.”  So far, so good.  Bezos later signed off on the paper’s still masthead slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Marty Baron, the Post executive editor from 2013 to 2021, in his newspaper memoir Collision of Power wrote that Bezos was a force for good in the institution Baron helmed.

But Baron, reacting to Bezos’ s newest action that seemed economically self-serving and ingratiating to get in step with the president who has seized virtual dictatorial powers in just a month, has revised his opinion.  Bezos’ new direction. he told the Wall Street Journal, were “deeply disturbing…and a betrayal of the history of the Post.”

Matt Murray, the current executive editor, has tried to reassure his staff that any changes in the Opinion section have no bearing on the newsroom. In fact, the Feb. 27 newspaper featured a wide range of staff stories on the Trump/Musk deconstruction of the federal government but also on its reversing decades of progress in health, the environment, civil rights, foreign policy, and natural security.

Some of the many stories — four on page one — were headlined:  Trump gives Musk his full support. U.S. agencies told to submit proposals for leaving D.C. Musk’s empire is built upon billions in government funds. Backbone of climate policy could be repealed: EPA urges White House to nullify a finding on greenhouse gases’ harms

The last, reporting that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin was advising the White House to backtrack on climate change, was almost life imitating art: A few days ago, the 2004 movie “The Day after Tomorrow” streamed on cable channels. It forecast a global ice age resulting from the warming of the planet.

There was more in that day’s paper: IRS to close over 110 taxpayer assistance hubs.  Trump’s shocking new world order is quickly taking shape.  Threat of Medicaid cuts looms over GOP lawmakers. And that was just in the A section. Metro’s lead story: Fresh round of firings looms: DOGE TAGETS MORE FEDERAL WORKERS. Many positions at most agencies are at risk.  Style’s off-lead: U.S. Marine Band cancels concert over DEI orders. And just below the fold: Art museum run by OAS nixes two exhibitions, “to comply with Trump administration orders to stamp out federal funding for ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ efforts.”

There was more on the next day’s front page, including: Reports on aid cutbacks held amid reprisal fears. That’s a lot of news you can still find in The Post, in print or online, that you won’t see elsewhere.

There is an expectations of more resignations or firings of opinion columnists deemed too “liberal.”  Some have wondered whether Ruth Marcus, David Ignatius, Catherine Rampell, E.J. Dionne, and Eugene Robinson will survive the purge.   I read that that an Erik Wemple media column on the Bezos declaration was “spiked,” according to Gene Weingarten’s Sub Stack post, illustrated with an actual spike — where killed stories were impaled before computers, from which they are simply deleted.

Notably, today’s Sunday Opinion essay by Dana Milbank, pegged to the twin pillars identified by Bezos, identified “The real threat to ‘personal liberties and free markets'” as — wait for it — President Donald Trump!  Subhead online and from the text: “The rapidly spreading authoritarianism coming from this administration endangers all of our freedoms.”

David Maraniss, my longtime friend, former editor and all-around good guy, posted on Facebook that so long as Bezos owns the Post, he will no longer write for the newspaper, with which he’s been associated for nearly half a century. But not everyone can afford the luxury of quitting, he added.

In  my decades in the news business, I’ve worked for or been associated with three newspapers where ownership more or less affected news coverage.  At the Philadelphia Bulletin, where I was a reporter from 1965-1970, the owner and editorial board did not directly interfere in coverage. But there was sort of a gentlemen’s agreement not to offend the local establishment. In fact, when the City Hall bureau chief died, the publisher discussed his replacement with a Chamber of Commerce official who later became a Republican candidate for mayor. The censorship was internal, imposed by city room bosses.  whose outspoken racism and pro-Vietnam war views were reflected in stories buried, dropped after one edition, or simply killed.

Across town, editorial meddling was much more obvious, as owner Walter Annenberg routinely killed stories or kept out of the Inquirer people or groups he didn’t like, which included later governor Milton Shapp, the University of Pennsylvania president, and the entire 76ers basketball team. He even employed a personal hatchet man, a reporter named Harry Karafin, who on the side was extorting sources. Karafin’s racket was exposed by Philadelphia Magazine. He was prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to prison, where he died. Following the magazine story, the Inquirer ran a seven-part series on Karafin’s betrayal. It was the talk of the town, but The Bulletin published not a word about it until Karafin had been criminally charged.

The Bulletin was especially differential to the city’s police, headed up by the pre-Trumpian Commissioner Frank L. Rizzo. Then the Knight Newspapers acquired the Inquirer in January 1970.  Soon thereafter both the Bulletin and Inquirer ran brief stories on a police shooting of two black teenagers, one fatally. But the Inquirer followed up a month later with a front page investigation headlined BOY DIES OF POLICE BULLETS: TWO VERSIONS. On another occasion, a Bulletin reporter went along on a police raid of a West Philadelphia apartment in search of guns they claimed radicals were stockpiling for revolution. Turned out they raided the wrong apartment, and the Bulletin chose not to run a story. Likely this story died in the newsroom and not in the august editorial board, composed largely of patrician Main Liners, who occasionally commented sympathetically on the blight of the city’s inner city poor.

Some 20 years later, as the journalist-in-residence at the James Thurber House in Ohio, I spent a day a week at The Columbus Dispatch newspaper, as a writing coach and in-house ombudsman.  Its hometown owner was deeply involved in civic life, especially in an annual flower show, and there was great fear of crossing some unwritten and unspoken line in covering local stories. It was a classic case of “anticipatory” self-censorship I did not feel was warranted.  I encouraged reporters there to take risks and produce important even controversial. There were no repercussions. The Dispatch, still independently owned, continues to publish.

Which brings me back to Bezos. In the wake of the owner-ordered rightward turn at The Post, many readers and friends have either canceled their subscriptions or asked me or my wife, “What does Gene think?”  I believe acts of omission or commission by a national publication like the Post have far greater impact than would those with lesser influence to affect public discourse and decisions by lawmakers and citizens.

I decry the decimation of local news staff and coverage, and I am annoyed by occasional weasel words to describe the facts the stories otherwise correctly report.  But there are many fine Post reporters continuing to do important work, despite the apparent “new direction” proclaimed by Bezos. So long as the paper continues to report in its news pages without any political or ideological spin the actions of the administration many have credibly called a dictatorship, I will continue to subscribe.  Jeff Stein, a Post economic reporter, said so far there has been no pressure on the newsroom to back off from tough coverage. But if and when there is, he added “I’m out.”  That makes a lot of sense to me, for now.