A former Washington Post columnist has opened up about why his title wasn’t “worth keeping at any cost” after he quit the Jeff Bezos-owned paper and accused editors of killing a column for being “too opinionated.”
Joe Davidson — who joined the paper in 2005 and wrote the “Federal Insider” column since 2008 — broke down the “death blow” to his time at the paper Tuesday on Facebook, claiming that he was subjected to an inconsistently applied editorial policy.
Davidson wrote that in the now-dead column he had declared that “one hallmark of President Donald Trump’s first three, turbulent months in office is his widespread, ominous attack on thought, belief and speech.”
He added that he doesn’t believe Bezos — who has kissed Trump’s ring since his election win — was directly involved in the decision but he’d be “naïve to ignore the context.”
“As a columnist, I can’t live with that level of constraint. A column without commentary made me a columnist without a column,” Davidson wrote.
