The Washington Post’s opinion editors love data centers, the humongous and increasingly unpopular server warehouses that are the physical backbone of the internet and artificial intelligence. In unsigned editorials, podcasts, and guest op-ed columns, the Post’s take has been focused and forceful. America needs more data centers to boost the economy, compete with China, and power the AI revolution. Elected officials, environmentalists, and plain old citizens who object to their proliferation—because of noise pollution, electrical consumption, and other concerns—should get out of the way.
What the Post’s data-center cheerleading only intermittently mentions is its owner’s vested interest in the topic. Billionaire Jeff Bezos, who bought the newspaper in 2013, is the founder, executive chairman and largest shareholder of Amazon, one of the world’s leading data-center operators.
Through its Amazon Web Services subsidiary, the company owns or leases hundreds of data centers in more than 50 countries. At the moment, it is spending about $60 billion to build new “hyperscale” facilities in Missouri, Mississippi, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. Many of AWS’s existing facilities are in “Data Center Alley”—the archipelago of centers carved from the farmlands of Loudon, Prince William and Fairfax counties in Northern Virginia, all just a few miles from the Post’s headquarters.
Moreover, data centers are arguably more critical to Amazon—and to Bezos’ fortunes, both figurative and literal—than the company’s ubiquitous delivery trucks. While Amazon is an ecommerce and retail behemoth, profit margins in those areas tend to be razor-thin; by contrast, AWS produces outsized margins that have driven the company’s growth and value.
These details would be hard to discern, however, from reading the Post’s voluminous and enthusiastic data center commentary: I was unable to find a single editorial or opinion column opposing their construction over the past six months. The Post sometimes includes a simple mention—“Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns the Post”—near the bottom of its boosterish articles. But even those sorts of passing references often go missing.
An editorial published on June 8 bashed “finger-in-the-wind” politicians who oppose new construction projects, but offered no indication that its owner had a dog in this fight. A May 28 op-ed column written by a retired Air Force officer argued that data centers are “foundational” to American military power; the writer’s bona fides were disclosed in an editor’s note but not the Post’s corporate connections. Another guest column in March asserted that opposition to data-center construction will ensure that only the wealthiest benefit from AI, a contention rich in irony. It, too, left out the Post-Bezos-Amazon nexus.
The same goes for a 50-minute Post editorial podcast (“Why data centers don’t deserve so much hate”) in May featuring the paper’s deputy opinion editor and two opinion columnists. And for a series of letters to the editor debating the impact of the data-center building boom.
An even more direct financial link between the Post and a major data-center developer has rated even less disclosure. Last year, the newspaper announced a partnership with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. Under the “strategic content-sharing” agreement, OpenAI pays the paper to display Post links and articles when users ask ChatGPT for breaking news or information about politics, technology, and global affairs.
Like Amazon, OpenAI is in the midst of a multibillion-dollar buildout of its data-center campuses in Michigan, Texas, Ohio, and New Mexico. Yet it’s hard to find any mention of the Post’s financial connection in opinion columns about data centers or generative AI. The paper didn’t even bother to say so when its columns were specifically about ChatGPT.
Similarly, the corporate web of connections is even more complicated than Post readers would ever learn from its editorial page. Amazon and OpenAI aren’t just competitors in the AI race; they’re partners under a multiyear, $138 billion investment by OpenAI into AWS’s cloud-computing infrastructure. I couldn’t find a single reference to this agreement in any of the paper’s supportive commentary.
Post opinion editor Adam O’Neal and deputy editor James Hohmann didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. A Post spokesperson, Olivia Petersen, declined comment on specific articles but said Post editorials that mention Amazon or Bezos “in a meaningful way” aim to make clear that Bezos owns the Post. Bezos’ ownership of the Post is spelled out on the organization’s “about” web page and its disclosure practices are published on its “policies and standards” page, she said. The document includes the following:
This news organization is pledged to avoid conflicts of interest or the appearance of conflict of interest wherever and whenever possible … Fairness includes honesty—leveling with the reader.
Of course, neither newspapers nor their owners are known for being entirely selfless: editorial pages have always been a platform for advocating whatever is in their self-interest. It’s a privilege of ownership, as Bezos demonstrated when he defended his decision not to endorse a presidential candidate in 2024, and when he directed the Post’s editorial pages to focus on his ideological priorities, “personal liberties and free markets,” early last year.
Still, publishers also have a tradition of transparency—particularly at the Post. Fair and honest disclosure of a newspaper’s corporate connections enables a reader to better judge the integrity of its advocacy. Failure to do so can erode trust, and even suggest deception. “Media credibility hinges on the audience’s assumption that journalists are, first and foremost, serving the public” and are honest brokers of information,” says Dan Axelrod, the chair of the Society of Professional Journalists’ ethics committee.
The organization’s ethics code, Axelrod tells Washingtonian, urges journalists to promote transparency by providing “as much information as possible to judge the reliability and motivations” of sources and published material.
In sharp contrast to its opinion page, the Post’s news side has taken a more skeptical approach to the data-center building boom. News stories have documented the downsides—the demands data centers place on the electrical grid and water resources, concerns about noise and air pollution, the impact on those living nearby. A story published on June 7 and displayed on the front page of the print edition was typical. It described grass-roots opposition to an Amazon Web Services data center under construction in a Columbus, Ohio, suburb and the larger context of such disputes. The Post’s news stories have also generally been rigorous and consistent in telling readers about the paper’s direct and indirect connection to the issue. The June 7 story included a disclaimer about Bezos.
At any news organization, reportorial coverage and editorial opinions on any topic will often diverge. But that shouldn’t matter when it comes to letting readers know where the organization’s financial interests lie. Bias is often subtle, but it’s corrosive all the same. As Axelrod put it, “Journalistic credibility is slowly won and swiftly lost.”
Paul Farhi covered the news media and other topics during 35 years as a Washington Post reporter. He’s been a freelance reporter since 2024.
