The Other Side of Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post

Since Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos purchased The Washington Post in 2013, the newspaper has been one of the great—and few—success stories in media, legacy or otherwise. The size of the paper’s staff has grown to over 800, and it has opened bureaus around the globe, most recently in Hong Kong and Rome. In 2015 it beat its arch-rival The New York Times in terms of readership (though the Times has since regained the upper hand), and it has been profitable for two years. No one, in 2018, seems to really know how to run a lucrative, well-read, daily publication, but The Post suggests that one way is to be owned by the richest man in the world.

The Washington Post published a false story, but it’s not fake news

On December 30, my phone flashed with a news alert that Russian hackers gained access to the United States’ power grid. The Washington Post broke a story saying that a Vermont utility found malware code previously associated with other Russian hacks, and that it was evidence of a breach in the U.S. electricity grid. But that last part—the most important piece of news in the story—was inaccurate, and the Post ran a correction: A computer at Vermont’s Burlington Electric was hacked and implanted with malicious code, but it wasn’t attached to the state’s power grid.

Jeff Bezos Refuses To Talk To Washington Post About Huge Washington Post News

Jeff Bezos may own the Washington Post, one of America's leading news organizations, but that doesn't mean he has to actually talk to the journalists at newspaper.

Bezos kept up a dubious practice of refusing comment to the journalists he pays when it was announced on Tuesday that he had replaced the Post's publisher, Katharine Weymouth, with former Politico executive and Reagan administration official Fred Ryan. Given that Bezos has owned the Post for little over a year, and that he was severing the paper's last ties with the storied Graham family by ousting Weymouth, the news was not insignificant.

Anybody expecting openness and transparency from Bezos, however, would be disappointed, as the Post's own story made clear:

"The announcement did not give reasons for the change or its timing. Bezos declined to comment through a spokesman."

Uh, OK then! Thanks for the help, boss.

Bezos, of course, has form in this area. Amazon, the other company he leads, is notorious for its almost complete refusal to comment on any story. It has continued to do this even with stories written in the Post.

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.com/
Author: The Huffington Post | By Jack Mirkinson

How The Washington Post’s New Owner Aided the CIA, Blocked WikiLeaks & Decimated the Book Industry

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
Author: --

Washington Post's Edward Snowden Editorial Draws Incredulous Reaction

The Washington Post's editorial board drew catcalls on Tuesday for calling for the leaks from Edward Snowden to be stopped--even though the Post itself had benefited from those leaks.

The editorial board, which is run independently of the news division, allowed that the scoops published by the Post and other outlets had "shed useful light on some NSA programs and raised questions that deserve debate." But, the board said, "The first U.S. priority should be to prevent Mr. Snowden from leaking information that harms efforts to fight terrorism and conduct legitimate intelligence operations ... The best solution for both Mr. Snowden and the Obama administration would be his surrender to U.S. authorities, followed by a plea negotiation."