

We Already Know What Kind of Newspaper Owner Jeff Bezos Will Be - r0h1n
http://coreypein.net/blog/2013/08/06/jeff-bezos-buys-washington-post-wikileaks-servers-amazon/

======
jval
I think everyone's kinda missing the point here.

You don't trust powerful people, plain and simple. Not because they're any
worse than the average person, but because you can't do anything to stop them
when they do something wrong.

There's a reason why we have three arms of government.

~~~
qq66
The media will always be controlled by powerful people. If a media outlet has
a self-sustaining profitable business model, it will bestow power upon its
owners and managers. If it loses money, it will be taken under the wing of an
otherwise wealthy and powerful individual.

~~~
alfiejohn_
> If a media outlet has a self-sustaining profitable business model

Take a look at who owns The Guardian:

    
    
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Trust
    

In 1992, the Trust identified its central objective as being the following:

\- To secure the financial and editorial independence of The Guardian in
perpetuity: as a quality national newspaper without party affiliation;
remaining faithful to liberal tradition; as a profit-seeking enterprise
managed in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

The Trust sees its main functions as being the following:

\- To secure the Trust's own continuity by renewing its membership and by
dealing with threats to its existence;

\- To monitor the organisation, financial management and overall strategy of
the Group, holding the board accountable for its performance;

\- To appoint and 'in extreme circumstances' to dismiss the editors of The
Guardian and The Observer,

\- To act as a 'court of appeal' in the event of any dispute between the
editorial and managerial sides of the operation.

~~~
lemming
This is why I religiously read and pay for the Guardian. They still run
massive losses but I do what I can - they're the best news source I've found
by far.

------
aaronbrethorst
Alec MacGillis (the TNR author linked to in this blog post,
[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114178/jeff-bezos-
purchas...](http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114178/jeff-bezos-purchase-
washington-post-bad-news)) is paid to generate controversy.

He's complaining about how the new guard isn't really serious about the news
and is _nouveau riche_ (see: "$42 million, 10,000-year clock in West Texas.").

Not that it's falsifiable, but I bet you that if MacGillis was a staffer at
the Post, he'd be crowing about how this represented 'new digital synergies'
(barf) just like Blodget is.

    
    
        "the faster-cheaper-further mindset"
    

No, this would be the Sun Times firing their photographers and equipping their
reporters with iPhones.

I have serious issues with Amazon, ranging from the work/life balance of their
engineers (I live about 10 minutes away from their South Lake Union
headquarters, and have no desire to ever work there), to the treatment of
their warehouse workers, but this is just pontification for the sake of page
views.

~~~
elsurudo
Basic ad-hominem attack. You did nothing to address the content of the
article. The article's main point has a lot of merit, IMO.

------
res0nat0r
> Remember when Amazon pulled the plug on Wikileaks?

The classified documents being hosted on AWS were in fact _illegal_ to do so,
and thus against the AUP of AWS so it was perfectly reasonable and appropriate
to pull the plug.

The wikileaks data dump is in no way comparable to Watergate and singular
reporting and investigation of _specfic_ illegal acts.

~~~
mathetic
Yes it is not comparable because Wikileaks documents showed people died
without any apparent reason but the States being the States is immune to
crimes against humanity.

If you get bombed/terrorised that's policy changing, nation wide traumatic
event and a good reason to bomb the shit out of the one attacked you. If you
do the same thing to another country (read plethora of countries) then you
first tag the journalist who has the balls to expose you, denounce him as a
criminal and then call it incomparable to your little presidential problems.

I don't care much about many traits you have just displayed arrogance,
ignorance and indifference being the leading ones but such ugly patriotism is
perhaps the worst of all and is the leading cause of where we are now as a
world.

I know this is the kind of comment that will get downvoted and considering the
general climate of HN it should be downvoted but some people really deserve
such harsh comments because their claims written in nice and harmless language
is plain offensive to all the people US decided to fuck up in their history
(and that's lots and lots of people all around the world).

~~~
bpodgursky
What the hell are you talking about?

~~~
falk
Wikileaks exposed that the U.S. was bombing Yemen in secret.

[http://www.salon.com/2010/11/29/wikileaks_yemen_revelations/](http://www.salon.com/2010/11/29/wikileaks_yemen_revelations/)

------
Lazare
Let me see if I can summarize this:

Some years back, a webhost whose terms of service said "no illegal content"
yanked the account of a client who was hosting some illegal content, as they
do routinely. The webhost is part of a large corporate structure that
ultimately has Jeff Bezos as CEO. Because of this, we know that Bezos, in his
role as a private individual, as the new owner (not manager, editor, or CEO)
of the Washington Post will, at some point in the future, exert undue
influence to kill legal but uncomfortable stories for the rich and powerful.

....wait, what?

I have no idea if Bezos will be a good owner or not, but this is the most
tenuous argument. AWS yanking Wikileaks account may or may not have been a
good idea; publishing the Pentagon Papers may or may not have been a good
idea. Let's just accept that the former was a travesty and the latter was
heroic. __They 're still radically different things. __

TL;DR: We have absolutely no idea what kind of newspaper owner Jeff Bezos will
be, but we are getting a good idea of what kind of blogger Corey Pein is...

(And if we're reading tea leaves, Bezos has supported libertarian causes in
the past. Like them or loathe them, libertarians are the only real organised
anti-establishment force in America; the flip side of a coin where Democrats
and Republicans are only one face. As unlikely as it is, wouldn't it be
amazing if Bezos leaned on the WaPo to hire Radley Balko? Now that would do
some comforting of the afflicted and some afflicting of the comfortable...)

------
yk
Well, this may or may not be a case of "watch the hands, not the mouth." But
at the moment we simply do not have enough information to speculate how the WP
will develop under new ownership.

~~~
Ygg2
True, though as the good old magic 8 ball says, all signs point to bad. Bezos
simply seems like someone that favors comfort over freedom, but then again I
won't judge actions that haven't yet happened.

------
ekianjo
The title is confusing. The author says "we already know" but in the article
itself, around the end, he admits nobody knows how the Post is going to turn
out: "I have no idea whether Bezos has the wherewithal to expand at such a
scale. I also have no idea what he has in mind for the Post and its newsroom."

------
greyman
IMHO the author is too harsh on Bezos. Ok, Amazon stopped hosting wikileaks,
but that's because they published classified diplomatic cables, which was
probably illegal, and (only in my opinion) also controversial; i.e. it is
questionable whether this served public interest, or was just an illegal act.
[Now I don't say the whole wikileaks is controversial, only this specific act
of publishing diplomatic cables].

If he will really stop some real investigative journalism story, which the
public has the right to know, like gov corruption etc., THEN I'll be
concerned. For now, let's watch what he is up to.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
You don't pull someone's hosting, against the probable public interest,
because you get a quiet word from a senator about something "probably illegal,
and also controversial". You pull someone's hosting when you get a properly
filled-out court order.

> real investigative journalism story

So are you saying the the collateral murder story was in no way "investigative
journalism" ?

------
SuperContext
So... no "benefit of the doubt" here? I think I'd rather wait 'till I actually
get to read the paper - and let dem articles speak for themselves - before
making a statement like "We Already Know What Kind of Newspaper Owner Jeff
Bezos Will Be." But, hey, that's just me. And I am totally biased, I mean, I
buy things from Amazon so...

------
Tichy
Amazon's job was not to be political. The WP's job is. I wouldn't draw
analogies from one to the other.

~~~
rz2k
I don't see how this article could neglect to address that Jeff Bezos bought
the paper himself, rather than having Amazon buy it.

Also, for it to mention Bill Gates without contrasting what he did to the tech
world through Microsoft during the 90s with what he is accomplishing for the
whole world as a philanthropist now is striking.

The mistake may have been inexcusable for anyone who believes that
transparency leads to better governance, but it was one decision, and we now
know that every company we thought had a whole set of established practices as
common carriers eventually caved to the federal government.

I don't think it's clear internet infrastructure providers experienced less
pressure from the Fed than the press did in the 1970s. Bezos may also have
considered his obligations to the stock holders of a public company without
the context of something equivalent to journalistic ethics.

Anyway, I'd agree that we don't actually know what role he'll play with the
Washington Post, or what he will do during the next 30 years, but we also
don't know whether he'll be courageous or not in journalism from one incident.

------
comice
The rich and powerful already exert influence on the media - they fund it
through advertising revenues.

~~~
eli
Also, the Graham family wasn't exactly poor.

------
temphn
A paper can resist government regulation, but a normal business cannot (or
could not in 2010). Bezos is philosophically an opponent of government
regulation[1] and may have bought the Washington Post simply because he hated
backing down in 2010.

Now he has a weapon and can fight back. We might actually see much more
reporting on the network of multibillion dollar bureaucratic TLAs that control
our GOV, with the IRS, NSA, and now DEA scandals being just the beginning.

[1] [http://www.geekwire.com/2011/meet-shel-kaphan-amazoncom-
empl...](http://www.geekwire.com/2011/meet-shel-kaphan-amazoncom-
employee-1/4/)

    
    
      Q: What would you ask Bezos if you sat down with coffee 
      for him today? 
    
      Shel Kaphan, First Amazon Employee: “The first (questions) 
      that come to mind are personal, but one that I’d like to 
      ask him is whether, even after what’s happened in the 
      economy since 2008, if he would still contend that less 
      government regulation is always better.”
    

Of course, Sarbox did nothing to prevent the financial crisis. And Dodd Frank
will do nothing to prevent the meltdown of the US dollar.

~~~
mcv
> may have bought the Washington Post simply because he hated backing down in
> 2010.

Interesting perspective. I hope it's true, but if it is, I'd appreciate if he
said so.

------
Sven7
The real question is - is there a better way to value, the _opinion_ pieces of
people who don't do anything other than write for a living?

