Response to My Letter to Jeff Bezos

By Ben Meiselas

Yesterday, I wrote a letter to Jeff Bezos and the leadership of The Washington Post after they announced they were firing more than one-third of their newsroom.

Some of the best journalists in America. Investigative reporters. Writers who dedicated their lives to holding power accountable. Reporters who worked in war zones, some of whom learned they were fired not from an editor or a phone call, but from a form email sent by Human Resources. In some cases, while they were still stranded overseas.

That is corporate cruelty and journalistic malpractice along with obedience and complicity in fascism.

I sent my letter to Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post leadership to make sure they understood the magnitude of their betrayal and to plant a clear flag for independent journalism at a moment when too many legacy institutions are openly capitulating to fascism.

Let’s stop dancing around the truth.

Donald Trump is a fascist. His movement is authoritarian. And his goal is to turn American media into state-aligned regime media, something closer to Putin’s Russia than a democracy. What we are watching now is compliance with a fascist regime.

We’ve seen this surrender at The Washington Post. We’ve seen it at CBS. We’ve seen it across corporate media. These institutions believe silence and complicity will protect them. That obedience will spare them. That if they stop challenging power, power will protect and favor them.

That belief is pathetic and dangerous.

And it’s failing.

Because independent media is not retreating. It’s growing. And the MeidasTouch Network is leading that growth.

We are powered by one of the strongest pro-democracy communities anywhere.

We have on-the-ground reporters in Minneapolis, in Washington, D.C., and across the country. We have sent reporters to Greenland. We have sent reporters to Ukraine. We operate internationally. We run a sprawling network of shows, podcasts, and platforms covering breaking news, legal analysis, and accountability journalism, including a dedicated channel in Canada, with more countries coming next.

While legacy media cuts and collapses, we expand. We hire more reporters. We add more writers and editors and staff. We reach roughly a billion views a month across our digital platforms, and we’re still growing.

So yes, the death of The Washington Post as a serious independent institution is devastating for democracy. But their collapse is not the end of journalism. It’s proof that the old model is finished.

Since publishing my letter, I’ve received thousands of messages from readers, journalists, veterans, teachers, parents, and people more energized than ever to fight back against this fascist project and the media ecosystem enabling it.

Independent journalism is under attack precisely because it works. And because the MeidasTouch Network has become the largest pro-democracy media outlet in the country, we are a target as well.

But understand this clearly.

We are not intimidated.

We are not slowing down.

And we are not backing down.

Jeff Bezos’s silence is not neutrality. It’s complicity. History will remember who stood up when fascism demanded obedience and who surrendered.

If you believe the press should challenge power instead of serving it, now is the moment to act.

Become a paid subscriber now to this Substack. Not as a gesture, but as a declaration that independent journalism will not be surrendered to authoritarianism. Let’s send a message to Jeff Bezos.

This fight is real. And together, we are winning it.

—Ben