With Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart away, his former colleague Ruth Marcus stepped up to pinch-hit for him on Friday’s edition of PBS News Hour. At the end of the discussion with New York Times columnist David Brooks, Marcus claimed the reason she left the Post is because owner Jeff Bezos is trying “to limit dissent” at the paper despite dissent being alive and well at the Post.
Host Geoff Bennett asked, “Lastly, Ruth, it's great to have you here. After an impressive and impactful career at the Washington Post, you decided to step down. Help us understand why.”
After beginning by thanking News Hour for having her on “even though I'm kind of professionally unhoused for the moment," Marcus claimed, “I had to resign because I could no longer tell my readers that I was able to write what I wanted about the things that I thought were most important to say.”
She recalled how “back in October, when Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post, decided not to run the already drafted endorsement of Kamala Harris and not to run presidential endorsements later, I disagreed with that decision and I wrote a column expressing my, I thought, polite disagreement with that decision. And it ran.”
Marcus also recalled a previous News Hour episode, “When Jeff Bezos decided that he was going to shift that — the opinion section more broadly in a way to limit dissent, as David pointed out on this segment when Jonathan was here, I also wrote a column. And that column, I had to write it because it was what I believed. I had written the previous column. That column didn't run. And when that column didn't run, I knew that my time at the Post had come to an end because I could no longer write what I wanted to say.”
It depends on what Marcus means by “dissent.” There are plenty of op-eds at the Washington Post that are critical of President Donald Trump and his administration, so Marcus can’t say Bezos has turned the paper into the MAGA Post. Bezos’s commitment to “personal liberties” would seem to silence conservatives more than liberals like Marcus or libertarians. As for Bezos’s devotion to “free markets,” Marcus eventually published that column in the New Yorker and wondered what he meant by that. She asked if that would include the forbidding of support for “reasonable regulation,” but based off a recent Post editorial about Trump’s environmental deregulation, the answer is no. Ultimately, the Post is still mostly the same liberal outlet it has always been; Marcus is just upset they couldn’t endorse Harris because she thinks the Post actually influences people.
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Here is a transcript for the March 28 show:
PBS News Hour
3/28/2025
7:44 PM ET
GEOFF BENNETT: Lastly, Ruth, it's great to have you here. After an impressive and impactful career at the Washington Post, you decided to step down. Help us understand why.
RUTH MARCUS: Well, first, I want to say that I'm really grateful to be here at the News Hour. And the reason is, after I decided to resign after 40 days, six months, and six days, but who's counting?
BENNETT: Forty years.
DAVID BROOKS: Forty years.
MARCUS: Forty years. Sorry, 40 years, six — yes, thank you.
I had, among other comments, a lot of people from the — who are viewers of the News Hour, saying, we hope we will see you there. So I'm very grateful that you're having me, even though I'm kind of professionally unhoused for the moment.
I decided to — I had to resign because I could no longer tell my readers that I was able to write what I wanted about the things that I thought were most important to say.
And what happened was, back in October, when Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post, decided not to run the already drafted endorsement of Kamala Harris and not to run presidential endorsements later, I disagreed with that decision and I wrote a column expressing my, I thought, polite disagreement with that decision. And it ran.
When Jeff Bezos decided that he was going to shift that — the opinion section more broadly in a way to limit dissent, as David pointed out on this segment when Jonathan was here, I also wrote a column. And that column, I had to write it because it was what I believed. I had written the previous column. That column didn't run.
And when that column didn't run, I knew that my time at the Post had come to an end because I could no longer write what I wanted to say.
BENNETT: Well, we are glad to have you here.
MARCUS: Thank you.
