Billionaires already have an outsized role in the nation’s public square. Alongside their ever-increasing predominance in philanthropy, controlling media and communications is another way for the super-rich to exercise their power. Even as outlets turn to the wealthy for much-needed support, it’s incumbent on the nonprofit sector — especially funders themselves — to remain steadfast in backing an independent press.
We frequently write about efforts to marshal philanthropic dollars for media and journalism, and some of them have garnered significant support — like Press Forward and the American Journalism Project. Some have also drawn on funding from living megadonors. Nevertheless, many of the most consequential acts of billionaires in the media sphere aren’t taking place through philanthropy — they’re happening in the private sector, and their ramifications are troubling.
Examples are numerous: the Murdoch media empire, Mark Zuckerberg’s control of Facebook and Instagram, Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter.
Most recently, Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, announced there would be major changes coming to the Post’s opinion pages. Bezos, who purchased the Post and a few other newspapers for $250 million in 2013, wrote on X, “We’re going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics, too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
Bezos went on to say that newspapers once provided readers with “a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views” but that role has been taken over by the internet. (It’s no small irony that Bezos made his announcement on another billionaire’s social media platform.)
The Post’s Opinions editor, David Shipley, resigned in response to Bezos’ changes. And shortly afterward, columnist and associated editor Ruth Marcus, who had been with the paper since 1984, resigned after leadership spiked her column criticizing Bezos’ new editorial policies. Readers have also voiced their frustration. According to NPR, more than 75,000 of the Post’s digital subscribers have cancelled their subscriptions.
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This isn’t the first time Bezos has intruded on the Post’s editorial section. Eleven days before last year’s election, Bezos killed an editorial that would have endorsed Kamala Harris for president. That, too, led to a wave of cancellations. Between that time and Election Day, the Post lost more than 300,000 subscriptions.
Marty Baron, who served as the Post’s executive editor between 2012 and 2021 lambasted the decision to cancel the editorial board’s endorsement as “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.” He added that then-candidate Donald Trump would see the move as an invitation to further intimidate Jeff Bezos and others, and that it was “disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”
Like a number of other billionaires, Bezos donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and joined the contingent of tech moguls who attended the event. Bezos also reportedly dined with the president before announcing the changes to the Post’s Opinions section. Some have speculated that these donations were a way to curry favor with the president and ensure their companies and interests would not be harmed. We saw a similar incident last year when the Los Angeles Times’ billionaire owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong cancelled the editorial board’s Harris endorsement.
This situation highlights the drawbacks of billionaires owning media outlets. Given the alarming number of newspapers that have folded in recent years, it can be a boon when billionaires offer to step in and buy them. But with that comes the risk of owners using their power to influence the paper’s coverage, as has been the case with Bezos’ recent actions.
Trust in media is already at an all-time low. According to a 2024 Gallup poll, 36% of adults surveyed have no trust at all in media and 33% expressed that they don’t have very much trust in media. While philanthropy cannot save the news industry on its own, there’s still a lot of things it can do. Chief among them is supporting nonprofit newsrooms.
“Grants can give newsrooms the runway they need to deepen their coverage, experiment with new approaches, help make important shifts toward greater diversity, and confront relentless threats from misinformation,” wrote Associated Press President and CEO Daisy Veerasingham in a Center for Effective Philanthropy blog post.
Philanthropy can also help develop new business models and funding strategies, support policy initiatives around the use of AI in newsrooms, protect investigative reporting, fund programs to educate and train journalists and fund to increase protections for journalists.
Despite a “Trump bump” in 2017 and over the following years, nonprofit journalism has yet to see a notable increase in funding since Trump’s 2024 election, though that may change. Funders interested in media, civic engagement and democracy — even those who may not have journalism on their radar — need to step up.
Local newsrooms, for example, are especially in need of support. There are also newsrooms that focus on specific populations that can have a big impact on the lives of their readers. Recently, the Knight Foundation made a $2 million grant to Documented, a nonprofit newsroom in New York that publishes stories for the city’s immigrant population in four languages. The grant will support Documented’s efforts to expand its work nationwide.
A 2023 report from NORC at the University of Chicago found that there’s been an increase in journalism funding in recent years, especially to those that serve communities of color. The report also notes the risk of conflict of interest on the part of funders and highlights the need for universal guidelines and an “unflinching commitment to ethics” to prevent them.
A free press is essential to a functioning democracy. As newsrooms struggle and billionaires’ influence continues to grow, it is imperative for philanthropic funders to support journalism and to seek ways to prevent owners and backers from overstepping their roles. The Washington Post has been one of the nation’s newspapers of record for more than 100 years. While it is disappointing and alarming to see Bezos using it for his own agenda, this episode highlights the need to support a free and independent press to keep the public informed and safeguard our struggling democracy.
