Opinion | The Washington Post And The Market’s Verdict On Moral Journalism

Last Updated:February 05, 2026, 20:44 IST

The paper’s editors appear to have failed to look beyond their own ideological vanities and activism to recognise how dramatically the ground had shifted

For years, large parts of Western journalism have confused activism with reporting. File pic/AFP

The Washington Post, long regarded as a grandee of Western liberalism, is teetering on the precipice of irrelevance. Its proprietor, billionaire Jeff Bezos, has effectively called time on the paper’s haughty certitude by cutting back funds needed to run the broadsheet, forcing job cuts estimated at close to 30 per cent. Hundreds of positions have evaporated, leaving editors and reporters contemplating a moribund future. More than one retrenched journalist has described the layoffs as the “death of democracy". One insider reportedly characterised the newsroom atmosphere as “funereal".

Bezos is being blamed for sacrificing the “pursuit of truth" at the altar of political patronage. That explanation is convenient but incomplete. The more uncomfortable reality is that WaPo’s journalism was rejected by the market. If this were merely a question of money, Bezos could easily have continued subsidising losses. The decision to cut was taken because the product no longer justified the cost.

The paper’s editors appear to have failed to look beyond their own ideological vanities and activism to recognise how dramatically the ground had shifted. For too long, moral certainty substituted for relevance, and advocacy was mistaken for journalism.

Nowhere was this disconnect more evident than in coverage of the non-West, particularly India. In India’s crowded media ecosystem, the Washington Post carved out attention primarily through withering polemics against Narendra Modi and the BJP. The paper became fixated on what it described as the Prime Minister’s authoritarian and parochial instincts, repeatedly asserting that these were responsible for the erosion of Indian democracy.

For years, large parts of Western journalism have confused activism with reporting. Correspondents did not come to India to understand the country. They came to sermonise. Their view of India was filtered through colonial tropes and elite echo chambers, often populated by a deracinated privileged class that had internalised a modern version of the white man’s burden.

When Narendra Modi, an outsider to this ecosystem and not a product of the PLU, won power in 2014, this class feared an erosion of influence. And since popular sovereignty appears to count only when it delivers outcomes approved in Western newsrooms, Modi’s democratic mandate was declared suspect.

Kashmir, the Delhi riots, the farm protests, and CAA-NRC: every issue was forced into the same authoritarian template. Readers saw through the framing. They read the spin. Perhaps that’s what happened with readers in the WaPo’s own homeland.

Journalism that confuses ideology with insight and superiority with substance does not deserve indefinite support, even from a billionaire.

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