The Post runs the same stories seen in essentially all papers in the world. A lot of them implicate the president negatively. But how does precluding the pentagon from it's first choice on these grounds good for the country?
In a free and uncorrupt country, you don't allow leaders to intervene in national security issues because they are embarrassed by a paper's coverage. Thus few people are directly saying that amazon should loose the bid because their CEO has a paper the president doesn't like.
More common and to be consistent with the notion of a corruption free democracy, the defense for this is the claim that, despite significant pressure, this surprising turn of events would have happened anyway. This is the story being promoted more but it does require a improbably interpretation of events that only supporters could really ever internalize. Especially since Trump's own secretary of defense flatly said the goal was to screw Amazon over the Post.
I agree that Bezos's/ Wash Post disposition relative to the anti-President coup, likely had to be important consideration.
As I noted, 10s of millions of tax payers consider Washington Post is not a newspaper, but a propaganda agent actively involved in to the coup attempt against a constitutionally elected President of US.
Just chucking it of to 'president does not like a news paper' -- is diluting the tremendous affects these things have on the well-being of the country and its citizens, and, (given US position in the world stage) , on the rest of the world.
Additionally, anti-president spying and evidence manufacturing was, in part, orchestrated by leaking to these 'newspapers' and then referencing the generated articles as 'potential evidence' that warrants the investigation.
(eg, leaking the dossier [1] and other fabrications through news organizations )
Some think the anti-president coup attempt in US, is good for the country and for the world.
Some do not.
That probably, defines a big part of person's view, where they stand on awarding contract to AWS vs MS.
(Unless there is tremendous technical evidence that MSs offer will not be competent compared to AWS, or that financial burden on tax budget will be enormously different)
There's considerable evidence that Amazon lost this because the President doesn't like The Washington Post.
Even assuming the accusations against Amazon are true as well: what's worse? (a) A vendor gaining unfair advantage and overcharging by 10%? Or, (b), the President using the power of the federal government to punish journalists for criticising him?
The Washington Post was, by the way, the newspaper that uncovered that the Trump Foundation had spent their complete budget at Trump properties or for personal expenditures such as the famous painting.
This was several million $, all donated by members of the public, ostensibly intended to help veterans. These accusations lead to a court case, which the foundation lost, requiring it to be shut down and his children being barred from serving on non-profit boards in the future.
So, to answer the choice from the beginning: if you choose (b) and allow the WashPo and other media to be pressured into silence, you'll lose the free press and still get the corruption.
The crazy thing is, the deal should be getting scrutiny anyway. This would be Trump doing his job.
The thing that should worry us more is the concentration of power of a single individual owning Amazon and the Washington Post represents. Why should a corporate deal affect a newspaper watching out for the interests of the public? It seems insane. That's because it is.
Except that The Washington Post operates independently, and has strong editorial standards, something that a lot of "news" sites on the Internet today don't even pretend to have. The Post continues to publish articles about surveillance, as well as articles critical of Amazon.
For example, here's reporting on an interview with Martin Baron, the paper’s executive editor:
Mr. Bezos holds conference calls with The Post’s leadership every other week to discuss the paper’s business strategy but has no involvement in its news coverage, Mr. Baron said. During his occasional appearances at The Post’s building, Mr. Bezos sometimes stops by a news meeting “just to thank everybody,” Mr. Baron said.
“I can’t say more emphatically he’s never suggested a story to anybody here, he’s never critiqued a story, he’s never suppressed a story,” the editor said.
“Frankly, in a newsroom of 800 journalists, if that had occurred, I guarantee you, you would have heard about it,” he added. “Newsrooms tend not to like those kinds of interventions, particularly a newsroom that’s as proud as The Washington Post.
“If he had been involved in our news coverage, you can be sure that you would have heard about it by now,” Mr. Baron added. “It hasn’t happened. Period.”
The Washington Post really has lost a lot of credibility since the Bezos purchase in 2013. It reflects a trend of consolidation of corporate media in the hands of America's ruling oligarchs (who exert far more influence over federal policies and expenditures than any Congressperson, and perhaps the President as well).
For example, I can't imagine the WaPo taking this same tone with regard to a Bezos acquisition or contract, or publishing confidential leaked details of inside business discussion, as it would almost certainly upset their owner and lead to 'a change in leadership' at the Post. The same is true of their coverage of the unionization effort at Amazon warehouses and distribution centers. Similarly, the CIA and NSA deals that AWS has engaged in aren't getting this level of scrutiny from the Post either, and there's little chance of the Post ever printing anything [like the 2010] "Top Secret America" series on how defense contracts are doled out to intelligence contractors.
To be clear, Washington Post is not owned by Amazon. It's owned by Jeff Bezos. To accuse one of the nation's most respected papers of sacrificing its 139 year reputation over an opinion piece about working in Google HR is kind of farcical.
I think this article seems like a good example of editorial independence. Even though both Amazon and the Washington Post are pretty much owned by the same person, the Washington Post has published a pretty negative article about Amazon.
Washington Post seems to be a lot better about being a neutral outlet with quality journalism. Although... being owned by Bezos makes me wonder how long they can remain that way.
The article’s entire theme is “was this purchase a good thing” and the subhead (“raises questions about [Goodreads’] longtime owner”) strongly implies the answer is no.
I get why “well, journalists never critically report on the people who directly or indirectly sign their paycheck, dontcha know!” is such a popular take (particularly in cynical times with a skeptical crowd), but the history of news shows journalists reporting on things that could potentially piss off their owners pretty repeatedly, and the Washington Post reporting on things relating to Amazon doesn’t seem to be a serious exception.
Amusingly, I just did a DuckDuckGo search on “washington post reporting on amazon”, intending to see if there were critical takes on said reporting, and what came up instead was: a plethora of WaPo articles with headlines like “Bernie Sanders launches investigation into Amazon labor practices”, “Lawmakers: Amazon may have lied to Congress”, “Perspective: How Amazon shopping ads are disguised as real results”, “FTC sues Amazon over Prime enrollment without consent”, “Amazon’s OSHA data shows its workers injured at higher rates than rival companies”, and “Tour Amazon’s dream home, where every appliance is also a spy”.
I'm pretty amused that you guys think I'm advancing a pro-Trump position here. The reason he's doing this is clearly because he's a vindictive authoritarian that wants to suppress the free press. There's no way he cares at all about anti-trust law.
The point I'm trying to get across is that the independence of the free press is threatened by concentration of power. Trump should not even be able to attack the Washington Post in this indirect fashion. In this case, he's probably doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Let The Post be independent of enormous corporate interests and reduce its attack surface.
Also, I might have to watch A Few Good Men tonight. Thanks for the reminder.
"DON'T YOU KNOW THE PRESIDENT LIES?!"
"SON. YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH."
Or you could blame Bezos. See the online front page of the Washington Post.[1] For decades, the criterion for the front page seemed to be "What does a member of Congress or a cabinet member need to know today". So everybody at the senior levels of government read the Post, and so did their subordinates and everyone who had to deal with them, and everybody involved with the government who needed to know what the top people were doing.
Then Bezos bought the Post. Now it looks like the top stories are picked by click-through rates. The print edition of the Washington Post, which you can see online, has better story selection.[2]
It's hard to find any decent daily news outlet today. Reuters comes the closest on what's important. Their lead stories are on Brexit and the latest South China Sea troubles. Those are events which will have worldwide impact if things go bad.
I miss the San Jose Mercury News from the days before it was bought by the Contra Costa Times.
Can the Washington Post get away with significant original criticism or investigations of Amazon?
A medium sized think tank corrupted for a megacorp isn't as bad as the major government focused newspaper, the only newspaper bigger is the nytimes.
But I guess if the choice of jb owning wp or having wp go bankrupt and go away, I would choose wp being owned by jb. Journalism is important to keep around.
It could be that it was a personal acquisition because Amazon isn't making a much of a net profit, and buying the Washington Post would cause Amazon stock prices to tank.
Given the traditional separation of editorial and business in newspapers, I wouldn't be shocked if the Post ran an Amazon hit piece just to test the boundaries.
In a free and uncorrupt country, you don't allow leaders to intervene in national security issues because they are embarrassed by a paper's coverage. Thus few people are directly saying that amazon should loose the bid because their CEO has a paper the president doesn't like.
More common and to be consistent with the notion of a corruption free democracy, the defense for this is the claim that, despite significant pressure, this surprising turn of events would have happened anyway. This is the story being promoted more but it does require a improbably interpretation of events that only supporters could really ever internalize. Especially since Trump's own secretary of defense flatly said the goal was to screw Amazon over the Post.
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