• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, 4 hours ago

Pamela Alma Weymouth, the granddaughter of the late Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham, has blasted current owner Jeff Bezos for “tearing down the very newspaper” Graham defended during the Watergate era. 

“My grandmother was the woman who staved off threats from President Richard Nixon, defied her lawyers and her board, and said yes to publishing the Pentagon Papers, which revealed that the government was lying to the public about the Vietnam War,” Weymouth writes in The Nation. “She was the woman who published leaks about Nixon’s involvement in Watergate. The woman who found her voice in the very act of using it.” 

All true. But those days are long over. “Now, in the face of a more tyrannical Trump, Bezos has retreated,” Weymouth charges. “He’s muzzled his editorial page. Exceptional writers, editors, cartoonists have fled. Eight days before the election, the Post canceled a scheduled endorsement of Kamala Harris—breaking with decades of precedent.”

The Graham family sold the Post to Bezos in 2013—it’s a little late for regrets. As an executive said to a publisher whose newspaper he had bought and was now unhappy, “You cashed the check, didn’t you?” 

Actually, Weymouth gives Bezos high marks for his actions during the first Trump term.

We’ll give her the last word because journalists will always revere the Watergate team of Kay Graham, Ben Bradlee, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.  

“I grieve for these writers, who must choose between feeding their families and honoring their integrity,” Weymouth writes. “Real American patriotism does not force journalists to deliver government propaganda. My grandmother was a real patriot; she protected the rights of her journalists to deliver the facts and speak their minds—without fear of censorship.”

You can read the article here.