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The Washington Post has laid off more than 300 journalists, dismantling its sports, local news and international coverage. “Everybody is grieving, and it’s a loss for our readers,” says Nilo Tabrizy, one of the paper’s recently laid-off staff, who describes a “robotic” meeting announcing the cuts. “They didn’t have the dignity to look us in the eye.” The shocking staff culling has been widely attributed to the paper’s leadership under Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who bought the nearly 150-year-old institution in 2013. Karen Attiah, the former global opinion editor at the Post, was hired soon after Bezos’s arrival. She recounts how the arrival of a billionaire backer initially revitalized the paper with resources and creative freedom, before souring over the next decade. “We thought [he] shared the same values that we had,” says Attiah, who was fired from the Post last fall over comments she made about the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. “Journalism deserves better than a billionaire owner who decides that partying in Europe is more important than people’s lives.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to stay on the media right now. In what’s been described a “bloodbath,” The Washington Post has laid off more than 300 journalists, about 30% of all its employees, dismantling its sports, local news and international coverage, including all of the newspaper’s Middle East correspondents and editors. The Post’s Ukraine reporter Lizzie Johnson wrote on X, quote, “I was just laid off by The Washington Post in the middle of a war zone,” she wrote from Ukraine.

On Thursday, fired workers rallied outside The Washington Post office. This is the reporter Ben Brasch, who was fired Tuesday.

BEN BRASCH: These layoffs are shameful!

FIRED WORKERS: Shame!

BEN BRASCH: The fourth-richest person in the world, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post. He can run it at a loss for the rest of time, and yet he refuses! And instead, he’s spending tens of millions of dollars buying a documentary for Melania Trump to curry favor with the president of the United States. When people show you who they are, believe them. Billionaires only get rich by stealing from us.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013. [In 2024], the paper lost over 250,000 digital subscribers after the paper announced it would not make an endorsement in the presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Bezos’s Amazon later donated a million dollars to Trump’s inaugural fund.

We’re joined right now by two guests. Karen Attiah, former global opinion editor for The Washington Post, was fired last year over social media posts made after the killing of far-right activist Charlie Kirk. Nilo Tabrizy is an investigative reporter who closely covers Iran. She was just laid off from The Washington Post yesterday.

Nilo, let’s start with you, what’s being termed a “bloodbath,” 300 employees of The Washington Post, a third of The Washington Post. You write about Iran. Talk about what happened in Iran. Talk about what happened with the Middle East coverage, overall, and what’s happened with all of your colleagues.

NILO TABRIZY: Yeah. Thank you. I’m glad to be here to discuss what happened at the Post.

So, our entire Middle East staff was laid off. Most of the international desk was........

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