Opinion pieces are still subject to approval by the editor and reflect the broader narrative of the news organization.
Simply compare the opinion pieces in the NYT (more left leaning) to those in the WSJ (more right leaning) -- there is a clear and obvious bias toward the overall publication's bias.
I'm not saying that the piece itself is unbiased. Opinion pieces are not supposed to be unbiased.
I'm saying that the fact that the piece was run gives Bezos the ability to say that he does not exert editorial control over the paper, because if he did, he wouldn't have let such a piece run at all.
There isn't and there doesn't need to be, because newspapers should be read as evidence rather than as authority.
Like any publication, the WP is what it is. It has particular staff, history, reputaiton etc, all of which make it strong in some ways but weak in others, including bias. Bezos' ownership of the paper is yet one more layer on all that.
There is, and never was, any alternative to reading stuff with your bullshit detector turned on.
Even if the answer is "no", that doesn't mean we should fall back to assuming WaPo is fully editorially independent. Just as our (current) inability to prove P != NP doesn't mean we should assume P = NP.
> Discussion of news topics with a point of view, including narratives by individuals regarding their own experiences