Last fall, The Washington Post failed to endorse a candidate for President. The decision stunned millions and sparked outrage that resulted, among other things, in 250,000 subscribers cancelling their subscriptions.

Today, The Post announced a “change coming to our opinion pages.” Jeff Bezos, owner of The Post, announced that “We are 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. There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.”

As a result, the editor of the opinion page, David Shipley, is leaving. Bezos said he offered him “the opportunity to lead this new chapter” and that Shipley “decided to step away.”

What does it all mean? Wasn’t The Post for personal liberties (whatever that is) and free markets before?

Right now, The Post publishes one editorial per day. If that practice continues, and if the daily editorial is about free markets and personal liberties, then what about Donald Trump and Elon Musk running roughshod over the Constitution and the federal government? What about Trump’s avowed intention to impose tariffs here, there and everywhere? Does “personal liberties” actually mean less government regulation?

When The Post announced its intention not to endorse in the Presidential election last year, it hearkened back to a decades-old decision from 1960—and abandoned in 1976—not to endorse. The paper endorsed every four years after that until 2024, and it was about to then as well—until Bezos intervened to kill it. “But we had it right before that,” publisher Will Lewis wrote, “and this is what we are going back to.”

The declaration didn’t make much sense then, and neither does this new one. The Post has two full pages, sometimes three, for opinions—plenty of room for “viewpoints opposing” the new “pillars”.

Query: The United States spends more on interest payments for its $34 plus trillion debt than it does for national defense. The proposed budget being considered by Congress will increase that debt considerably. Will the new editorial policy prevent The Post from commenting on this increase? The budget, by the way, proposes to lower taxes for corporations and wealthy taxpayers. Jeff Bezo’s multi-billion-dollar fortune depends, among other things, on the prosperity of Amazon and income from government contracts. Donald Trump famously has no love for The Washington Post.

It’s hard to penetrate the meaning of the anodyne language behind the Bezos announcement, but we can detect a direction based on other decisions. Earlier this month, for example, The Post declined to run a wrap-around front-page ad critical of Elon Musk. Richard Nixon’s first attorney general, John Mitchell, told reporters at the beginning of the Nixon administration, “Watch what we do, not what we say.” That’s good advice for this moment as well.

Ben Bradlee used to say that if you owned a newspaper, you had no room for conflicts of interest. “The older I get the more finely tuned my sense of conflict of interest seems to become,” Bradlee said. “I don’t think executive editors in charge of news should have anything to do with editorials. I don’t think editors should be officers of the company. I don’t think editors should join in any civic groups, clubs, institutions. I truly believe that people on the business side of the newspapers shouldn’t either.”

On a personal note, I spent 32 years of my professional life at The Post. I can’t remember ever being told “We can’t do that story” or of hearing anyone else saying they were pulled back. Katharine Graham was a courageous woman willing to risk her newspaper, her company’s properties and prison in pursuit of the truth and the public’s right to know. Her son maintained that tradition.

We’re living in perilous times. One by one the institutions put in place to protect us are being neutralized or eliminated. Trump has methodically moved to silence other news outlets—ABC and CBS being two prime examples. Companies don’t like to be sued. It’s expensive for them, even if they prevail in the end, so self-censorship becomes an attractive alternative.

The Post’s news coverage does not seem more restrained since Trump began his second term, but we can’t be confident any longer that that will continue to be the case. By long standing tradition The Post has a stone wall separating news and opinion. But how long before that wall is demolished, and news coverage is enfeebled?

This is no time for silence, or restrained prudence. More than principle is at stake. I was proud of my association with The Post. While the Graham Family owned it, The Post was on the right side of history. It’s not clear whether that tradition will continue.