The Washington Post announced on Monday the paper had been sold to Amazon.com founder and CEO
Jeff Bezos for $250 million. Bezos, one of the world’s wealthiest men,
now controls one of the most powerful newspapers in the country. Some
critics of the sale have cited Bezos’ close ties to the U.S. government.
In 2010, Amazon pulled the plug on hosting the WikiLeaks website under
heavy political pressure. Earlier this year, Amazon inked a $600 million
cloud-computing deal with the CIA.
Independent booksellers and publishers have also long complained about
Amazon’s business practices. We host a roundtable on the history of
Amazon and the future of the newspaper industry. "Monopoly newspapers,
especially The Washington Post in the nation’s capital, while it might
not be a commercially viable undertaking, it still has tremendous
political power," says Robert McChesney, co-founder of Free Press. "What
we have is a plaything for these billionaires that they can then use
aggressively to promote their own politics." Media critic Jeff Cohen
notes that while The Washington Post notably published reports on
Watergate and the Pentagon Papers decades ago, he thinks concerns that
Bezos will ruin its journalistic tradition is unfounded, saying that in
recent years, "The Washington Post has really been the newspaper of the
bipartisan consensus." We also speak to Dennis Johnson, publisher of
Melville Books. "Amazon is a company that feels no pain. They’ve, as far
as I can tell, never made money. … So, when you see him taking over The
Washington Post and you wonder is he going to be able to monetize it,
is he going to make it profitable, he probably doesn’t care," Johnson
says.Video
Source: democracynow.org
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