By Jaime Ortega.
The Washington Post sold its soul
The Daily Journalist is sad about the recent acquisition of The Washington Post, now owned by Amazon, which might pose a terrible blow for the integrity of its future journalism.
The Graham family that was once in control of the editorial side, might have sold its soul, to satisfy the needs of the business side.
Less than 24 hours after the Post’s $250m sale to the Amazon founder was announced, the newspaper showed its teeth with a 1.400 word examination of the issues focusing on Jeff Bezos’s mind.
“Amazon has grown steadily more comfortable with throwing its weight around Capitol Hill over the years,” the Post wrote, noting that it had spent $4.7m on lobbying in the last congressional session.
The main reason why the Post was sold was because of the revenue losses it suffered and the immediate decline in the print industry, which forced the newspaper to accommodate a new strategy to survive inside a competitive media world.
The consequences could have a negative effect on its reporting since it might bias information related with government outcast. And Amazon is known as a big lobbyist spender and government affiliate.
The Post is one of the only newspapers that has rarely never endorsed a political candidate except back in 00’s. The Post has got criticism from both Republicans and Democrats for its in-depth investigative reports that have questioned the reputation of the Intelligence Community. Most other print networks backed one way or another, political candidates and got paid an incentive for their services to promote media campaigns.
The buyout comes after Edward Snowden’s document leakage to the Post’s editorial, which was later followed with a lawsuit by the U.S. Government for publishing classified content from the NSA’s monitoring programs.
Its not in the benefit of the public sphere that a major newspaper like the Post, has been purchased by Amazon. It could transform the Washington Post into a business, rather than a newspaper. The Post was a great newspaper reporting sneaky-government endeavors.
Another Horizon.
Within the PRISM program run by the NSA, we find that corporate giants like Google, Facebook, Apple, Skype, Verizon and many others have forcefully participated with the U.S. Government under the scrutiny of the PATRIOT Act.
But the worrisome part is that one of the biggest information data collector providers for the Intelligence Community is Amazon, and somehow it has effectively avoided the main “information providers” lists.
Amazon also owns Alexa Internet, a web analyst engine, that since was it was purchased by Amazon in 1999, they underwent through structural changes to allow features that included visitor demographics, clicks-streams and search traffic statistics.
These sort of features are the ones that would perfectly synergize with collective statistical data used to monitor terrorism and spy on citizens under the Intelligence Community permission. So it would be no surprise that under the first PATRIOT Act, Alexa was allowing the government to collect data for surveillance porpoises.
Amazon is also more than likely an InfraGard member. An affiliate partner of the IC, and a quasi-governmental organization that collects suspicious information to allow the Federal Bureau of Investigation conduct investigations about possible threats that might suppose a threat to National Security. IngraGard is been under a lot of controversy for its ‘police supervisory’ role, kind of a corporate ‘Block Watch’.
They also partner with law enforcement agencies and other private corporations, so that they share intelligence information with each other.
As of December 2009, there were over 34,000 corporations and government agencies who were members. And their ultimate goal is to protect a very shaky term used as “The critical infrastructure” which has no clear definition to this day.
Privileges
The Post is now under the control of a company that receives more government grants, that it actually pays in taxes. In the UK, this seems to be the case with Amazon.
If the U.S. Government is facilitating help to Amazon for their loyalty, Amazon as a result could ban controversial investigations in the Post targeted to show misbehavior from the government, that could put a halt for investigative reporters to publish important stories that pose critical content.
Not only that, but if the Post remains silent about certain issues, it could very well be that just alike the lack of effort shown from the Criminal Division to prosecute major Wall Street bankers, Amazon could also bypass ‘other prosecutions’ in exchange to not publish information that could harm the reputation of the U.S. Government. (Sounds like conspiracy, but don’t shut yourself to the point were belief exceeds proven logic. Hint: WMD’s were not real)
The add-on of a corporate side running the editorials of the Post, plus the affiliations of government and homeland security services, could affect or weaken the status of the newspaper which is known for its exclusive reporting.
That could be very sad for journalism, as the Post was one of the few pioneers that provided good journalism in a mainstream media full of grade C, news.
Bezo is an All-Star successful business man, and it would be unfair for any journalist to believe a business man that is hungry for government grants. Unfortunately, good stories normally make less money because they carry a negative effect on giants that invest money on programs under investigation. The Post was a great government ‘Watch Dog’ that could very well end up inside the Media shelter.
Sad news.
