Trump’s war on the news – and another Bezos intervention

An important part of the Guardian’s identity is that we are a progressive and liberal news organisation – and also that we are open to different perspectives, in the public interest. Our great former editor CP Scott said in 1921 that “the voice of opponents no less than of friends have a right to be heard”, and in a polarised age, with pluralism increasingly under threat and an authoritarian in the White House, respectfully disagreeing with each other feels radical and necessary.

So Jeff Bezos’s intervention this week was troubling. Bezos, the world’s third richest man and owner of the Washington Post, intervened in the newspaper’s editorial output by restricting the kinds of opinion articles they were permitted to publish, telling staff that only commentary that supports “personal liberties” and “free markets” would be welcome in the opinion columns of the Post, junking decades of pluralism at the great title.

As Guardian columnist Margaret Sullivan put it: “Bezos no longer wants to own an independent news organization. He wants a megaphone and a political tool that will benefit his own commercial interests.”

Bezos’s move, much like his pulling of the paper’s pro-Kamala Harris endorsement in October, sends a clear signal to Donald Trump. This week his administration continued its alarming attacks on the press by denying reporters from the Associated Press, Reuters and HuffPost access to a cabinet meeting and taking control of which reporters and organisations have access to the presidential press pool.

Those moves came after Trump threatened to sue the Wall Street Journal over an editorial criticising his tariffs plan and the Associated Press failed in its bid to have its own ban from access to presidential events revoked by a Trump-appointed judge. Sullivan wrote another important column about that case. This, she wrote, isn’t just a disagreement over the name of the Gulf of Mexico, but “part of a wide-ranging effort to control the media, spread propaganda and interfere with the flow of accurate information”.

Like Bezos, many of America’s new oligarchs have moved politically closer to Trump to protect their commercial interests. It will make them richer, as will the AI revolution. In the UK this week the Guardian was part of the huge national campaign, Make It Fair, to demand that the government drops plans to relax copyright laws. Big tech’s AI models should not be allowed to take creative works, including journalism, without permission or payment. (The principle that we should be paid for our work is the reason the Guardian recently signed an agreement with OpenAI to allow them to license our journalism.)

For the past week I’ve been working in Australia, where I spoke about threats to the press on the Full Story podcast with Bridie Jabour. Here, control of the news is highly concentrated and a small handful of companies, led by the Murdochs’ News Corp, control 84% of newspapers, while Google and Meta account for 70% of digital advertising. This lack of pluralism gives a small number of executives – like the tech lords who control social media – massive power over information, which should be a public good. And, as we have seen over decades with Rupert Murdoch, that power can shape our lives in all sorts of dangerous ways.

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Germany’s election – a key vote at a key time for Europe – saw Friedrich Merz’s conservative bloc emerge as the largest party and the far-right AfD achieve its highest ever vote. Deborah Cole’s analysis provided five key takeaways, while Elon Musk was quick to congratulate AfD co-leader Alice Weidel (pictured) on her party’s gains. Timothy Garton Ash wrote that while the result had boosted the far right, Merz’s win also presented an opportunity for Germany to lead in Europe, and even stand up to Trump.

At least 160 medical workers from Gaza have been held without charge in Israeli prisons for months, reported Annie Kelly, Hoda Osman and Farah Jallad as part of our powerful Doctors in Detention series. Emma Graham-Harrison and Sufian Taha in Jenin reported on the biggest displacement of Palestinians on the West Bank since 1967. Our data team investigated the large number of Airbnb and Booking.com listings for places to stay in illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank. In Jerusalem, Julian Borger described the scene as thousands of Israelis lined the streets for the funeral of Shiri Bibas and her two young children who died in captivity in Gaza.

Even before Friday’s extraordinary scenes in the Oval Office, it was a pivotal week for Ukraine, which marked the third anniversary of the invasion ahead of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s ill-fated trip to sign a minerals deal with the US. Before that seismic moment in Washington, Luke Harding reported from a Ukrainian lithium deposit, where locals decried Trump’s “blackmail”. Shaun Walker spoke to Maryna Zabavska who has tried to bring home her son Ivan, who was captured in September 2022, held in a black site prison and last month appeared in a Russian court – just one of hundreds of thousands of family tragedies from the war.

In the UK, Labour peer Lord Evans of Watford was exposed by undercover reporters offering access to ministers in discussions about the sponsorship of an event in the House of Lords run by his son. Our investigation was published as part of a wider series, the Lords debate, which over the coming weeks will reveal how a string of peers are benefiting from commercial interests which could conflict with their role as legislators.

Rebecca Ratcliffe travelled to the Myanmar border to report first-hand on the deadly consequences of the cuts to USAid. She and Kate Lamb also examined how the cuts place further pressure on journalists who already risk their lives trying to report on atrocities committed by the junta.

Pippa Crerar revealed the UK government’s plans to boost defence spending by slashing the international aid budget ahead of Keir Starmer’s meeting on Thursday with Donald Trump. Andrew Roth looked at the key takeaways from the meeting, including the impact of Starmer’s charm offensive offer of a second state visit.

We’ve seen two powerful examples of the impact of Guardian investigations this week. The BBC admitted that it “fell short and failed people” and has apologised after an external inquiry found evidence of “bullying and misogynistic” behaviour by its former Radio 1 DJ Tim Westwood, following revelations in a joint Guardian and BBC News investigation in 2022. And the Law Commission has said it will review plans to reform the criminal appeals system in England and Wales after the Guardian reported serious allegations about the way the organisation has been run, including the miscarriage of justice in the case of Andrew Malkinson who was jailed for 17 years for a rape he did not commit.

Our Class act series from Lanre Bakare, Raphael Boyd, Nadia Khomami and Robyn Vinter looked at how the British arts is failing when it comes to class diversity. Data analysis found that one-third of artistic directors at the Arts Council’s most high profile organisations were privately educated, and we spoke to some of the country’s top artists about the barriers that exist for working-class creatives.

Esther Ghey’s transgender daughter Brianna was fatally attacked in a local park in 2023 – but her mother forgives the teenage murderers, and has even befriended one of their mothers. She spoke to Simon Hattenstone for this astonishing interview.

Guardian Australia launched a new podcast, Back to Back Barries, featuring the TV legend Barrie Cassidy, who also worked for former Labor party PM Bob Hawke, and Tony Barry, a former Liberal party strategist. Their weekly conversation about Australian politics is an instant hit.

Don’t miss these fabulous interviews with rock’n’roll legend Grace Slick, by Tim Jonze, and Jonathan Jones’s with Sue Tilley, who modelled nude for Lucian Freud when she wasn’t working in the jobcentre in the 80s.

What a week. (I know, we say that a lot these days.) Recover by enjoying this delightful edition of our legendary Blind Date column, with the mutually besotted Gráinne and Alexander.

One more thing …This long read interview with the wonderful Australian novelist Helen Garner, by Sophie Elmhirst, is pure pleasure from beginning to end. I read it on the day I visited the Guardian’s team in Melbourne, a city which plays a crucial role in the story … and while I’ve already read a couple of Garner’s novels, I’m now going to seek out her diaries.

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