It's traditional for the super-rich to buy newspapers and run them at a loss to advance their pet political causes; give favourable coverage to their friends and business interests; and flatter them by including them in celebrity coverage.

This tradition is literally older than America.

Given that Trump regularly accuses, without evidence, bezos of doing this, and given the generally high respect paid to wapo among non-conservatives, I guess my question is now - despite Appeal to Tradition, why would bezos sacrifice the respectability of wapo to turn it into a favorable rag?

Basically, I don't think he could get away with stirring his fingers around in wapo (which it's reported he currently doesn't do) without far more negative consequences than positive.