The Washington Post under Bezos is a subject John Kiriakou has returned to repeatedly as a subscriber rather than a critic at a distance, and on which his position hardened over the course of 2025 and into 2026.
The editorial page
In August 2025 he recalled how large a matter it had seemed when Jeff Bezos announced that the paper would no longer write editorials on a range of issues because everybody has a position and the paper no longer cared. What followed, in his account, was worse than silence: “now the editorial page is completely right-wing.” Rall’s addition — that it was also insanely corporatist — drew his agreement, and the example both men fixed on was an editorial on driverless cars in Boston which mocked objecting Bostonians as Luddites and argued that because the vehicles had proved themselves in Tucson, Boston would present no problem.[1][2][3]
By January 2026 his objection had become personal. What made him want to cancel his subscription most, he said, was what had become of the editorial board: “They may they they’re going to get calluses on their knees from the position that they’ve taken in front of the great and mighty Jeff Bezos. And I just can’t I can’t stand it. It it just makes me sick.”[4][5]
He then described trying to comment on what he called an obsequious pro-billionaire editorial. All he wrote was “shame on the Washington Post. You really are the paper of the 1%.” The comment was rejected as violating community standards.[6]
The retrenchment
Kiriakou tracked the cuts as they came. The paper announced it would not cover the Winter Olympics, was eaten alive on social media, and agreed to send a skeleton crew; a skeleton crew was then reported for the Super Bowl as well.[7][8] Foreign bureaux, war correspondents and conflict reporters were told to cancel their trips; large layoffs were coming to the newsroom and the business side; sports, local and international were all to be beaten up. The remaining strategy, as he read it, was to focus on politics and national security.[8]
His objection to that was the abandonment of local coverage — because no one else can do local except the paper in the local place, and because Washington’s local politics are also federal politics.[9] He noted in passing that the Washington Times became a thing in the first place, under the ownership of the Unification Church, largely because the Post’s sports coverage was a joke.[7]
The paper he would want
Asked what he would do with a magic wand, he answered without hesitation: a Washington Post that covered foreign policy, intelligence and politics, that had an investigative division, and that fielded two young hungry journalists — one in Northern Virginia, one in Maryland — and maybe a third covering the District itself. He does not care about the sports; he can get better sports coverage in a hundred other places.[10][4]
What he says is not on offer is the national look at issues that matter to the whole country. And on where the Post and the New York Times seem to be heading instead — two or three people talking about current events on video — his verdict was that he does not need to pay a monthly subscription for that, and that “people like us and Joe Rogan do a better job than they” do.[11][10]