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Jeff Bezos Escapes Scrutiny from His Own Paper–and Its Rivals
- pdog 9y agoIt's not just Amazon. Facebook and Google also want to avoid any criticism that suggests they should be regulated as utilities. The #1 marketplace, #1 social network, and #1 search engine companies all lend themselves to natural monopoly, much like the oil and railroad companies at the beginning of the twentieth century.
- x0x0 9y agoIt will be kind of amazing to watch the complaining as people who, by consensus, refuse to pay for news and discuss news on a site that helps them evade paying for news, then complain about what the news organizations they don't pay for do or don't do. Because apparently America is owed robust news organizations that act in the public interest and survive off bread and water. The parallels to open source software and maintainers will be ignored.
- RodericDay 9y ago> America is owed robust news organizations Americans would and should pay for this, collectively and without recourse, via a strong social safety net and possibly taxes. Your shelter, your food, a high quality of life for your kids, etc. should all basically be provided for, so that people can take risks and be daring journalists without being guilt-tripped into feeling like they sacrificed their offspring to their ego. However, levying taxes to pay for things has been systematically demonized as just not an option at all, and by-and-large people have been hoodwinked into believing that more and more facets of society need to be mediated via "the free market", and if they fail that test, they are not deserving of existence. It'll take a while until people realize that the market is just a tool, not a be-all-and-end-all.
- WalterBright 9y agoThere are countries that have taxation funded news organizations. They are hardly bastions of objective news. Like any organization, they serve whoever funds them - in this case, they serve the interests of the people that run the government.
- halter73 9y agoI think you're misreading the parent comment. They're not advocating for tax funded news organizations, but instead for a stronger social safety net. They're theorizing that this would enable people to pursue journalism without fear of losing their livelihoods because of struggles in that market sector. I'm not saying that I agree with this position. I think that without capital, the news industry would shrink and struggle even with a strong social safety net to support its journalists. Personal blogs cannot fully replace well funded news organizations.
- RodericDay 9y agoI don't know why you're downvoted. This is a correct reading of my post. I'm more concerned with the family of a daring journalist being safe regardless of their investigations, than with the actual remuneration of the journalist.
- __s 9y agoCBC was pretty critical of the Conservatives while they ruled Granted it's a debated topic: http://cbcexposed.blogspot.ca/2017/07/is-cbc-news-biased.html http://cbcexposed.blogspot.ca/2017/07/is-cbc-news-biased.htm...
- bch 9y ago> CBC was pretty critical of the Conservatives while they ruled That relationship was pretty combative from both sides, though, no? http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cbc-budget-cut-by-115m-over-3-years-1.1147096 http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cbc-budget-cut-by-115m-over-... http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/cbc-funding-heritage-minister-1.3470198 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/cbc-funding-h...
- costcopizza 9y agoThis was probably (wrongly) downvoted because it's hitting too close to home. Nearly every HN post with a paywall has comments boycotting or denouncing said paywall, how else do you expect them to survive?
- x0x0 9y agoI expect people who want robust investigations of what half trillion dollar companies are doing to pay for news, not expect reporters to devote say 1/4 of a year to an investigation at a cost of probably $100k+ (their salary, expenses, editors, travel, etc) in exchange for a couple hundred thousand pageviews with $0.1cpm ads. Though spending $100k to make $50 is actually supported by the valley =P ... but it doesn't lead to a robust public press.
- danielam 9y agoIt's not that simple. The amount of money it takes to run a newspaper exceeds the amount it could easily charge readers, at least in the conventional way in which newspapers have done. This has always been the case (a good read is Hillaire Belloc's "The Free Press").
- adventured 9y agoThere is in fact a highly functional, proven alternative to what you're proposing. It's the Intel approach. The US Government allowed Intel to keep its monopoly, while simultaneously restraining it enough that Intel wasn't able to truly lock out various competitors from rising up over time. ARM, Samsung, nVidia, AMD, Taiwan Semi, etc. It's also what ended up happening with Microsoft & Windows. Had the US Government not been involved at all, Microsoft could have trivially barred all competing search engines (bye Google) from their desktop platform, and all other browsers (bye Netscape, Chrome, Firefox), and all competing media software (bye iTunes), and so on. Intel didn't have to be regulated as a fake natural monopoly that it in fact obviously wasn't (nor are Facebook or Google), in order to keep the lanes open to competition.
- am1988 9y agoand so Bezos buys the post while the control FB and Google have on advertising (and increasingly the internet in general) just makes Journalism ever more reliant on them.
- jpttsn 9y agoThe term natural monopoly keeps cropping up, seemingly with a definition other than the one I'm familiar with. What does the natural adjective mean, the way you use it here?
- _mhr_ 9y agoA natural monopoly is where a company operates in an industry in which either network effects or vertical integration make a big difference for the competitiveness of the company, so it's naturally incentivised within the market for one player to gradually become dominant. I don't buy that Google is a natural monopoly for search, but it makes sense for Amazon and Facebook, since network effects are huge. That's how I interpret it.
- jpttsn 9y agoAssuming that's true for Facebook, how could they be so threatened by Instagram? Snapchat? And how could Facebook even make a dent in MySpace, who fit the natural monopoly definition above just as well? If social networking were a natural monopoly, could a startup really stand a chance? I feel the fast pace of innovation and customer behavior shifts makes these products very different from oil and railroads.
- edaemon 9y agoFacebook isn't really threatened by either of those companies. They own Instagram. They also own WhatsApp, which is overtaking Snapchat in users[1]. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/3/15537000/whatsapp-stories-status-users-175-million https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/3/15537000/whatsapp-stories-...
- mattnewton 9y agoThey were threatened enough to buy them at large valuations is gp's point.
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- Aloha 9y agoI personally don't see a good rationale for needing to recognize any of them as utilities. There are alternatives to Amazon, Facebook and Google - good ones at that - while it /could/ be argued that a search engine is an essential product, I would argue the opposite - and even more so for social networking and online shopping - if I saw conclusive proof that any go them were using their market power to force competitors out of the market, I might be more agreeable to the concept.
- nikofeyn 9y agowhat are the alternatives?
- nl 9y agoeBay, Snap/Twitter, Bing.
- hooluupig 9y agoTwitter is different from facebook.Snap is not and will never be a facebook alternative(vice versa).Because social network is not just client software but relationships.You can easily replace facebook/whatsapp with snapchat or whatever you like,but how do you persuade your friends and relatives to do that?If none of your friends use the alternatives,you have to reuse facebook.
- crdoconnor 9y agoThey've all used their market power to quash competitors.
- elefanten 9y agoYour language is debatable, on a case by case basis. But even assuming it true, even that is not the standard by which anti-trust is judged. It's judged based on consumer welfare. That's where the debate should lie. And no doubt it is a debate still. And the debate alone could shape actions and outcomes.
- hnuser350 9y agoGoogle and Facebook's interest in suppressing "fake news" is especially worrisome given the lack of transparency in how they are run. Left leaning websites are already seeing drop in traffic from search referrals because of changes in Google's ranking[1][2] [1] https://mronline.org/2017/07/28/new-google-algorithm-restricts-access-to-left-wing-progressive-web-sites/ https://mronline.org/2017/07/28/new-google-algorithm-restric... [2] http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/28/pers-j28.html http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/28/pers-j28.html
- tootie 9y agoAamzon isn't the #1 marketplace. They're the 9th largest retailer in a still very competitive space. Social media isn't important enough to regulate. Google Search is the only thing that could conceivably need regulation and really no one is demanding it right now.
- dredmorbius 9y agoNB: it was oil transport and most especially refining which seemed to capture true monopoly rents, most especially where oilfield control was not unitised. In the case of unitised oilfield control (that is: a single company or other entity controlled all extraction from a single resource), other monopoly powers might exist, most especially if the field exhibited lower-than-average costs (as in Saudi Arabia).
- smrtinsert 9y agoFAIR is a noted hard right wing organization.
- asymmetric 9y agoCare to explain your point a bit? Is it that FAIR is right wing, therefore its argument is flawed? Can you provide some backing to the claim that it is rightwing?
- noobermin 9y agoHmm, wiki says the opposite, that the organization leans left[0]. The organization itself calls itself "progressive"[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_and_Accuracy_in_Reporting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_and_Accuracy_in_Repor... [1] http://fair.org/about/ http://fair.org/about/
- cvsh 9y agoYou're thinking of the other FAIR: Federation for American Immigration Reform.
- f00_ 9y agoFacebook AI Research is notably a hard right wing organization
- SubiculumCode 9y agoI have been enjoying the investigative journalism of WaPost; I am disappointed to learn that it is so closely affiliated to Amazon, an economic powerhouse (e.g. commanding about 50% of online sales, and their AWS).
- noobermin 9y agoThere is a need for non-corporate owned media. There do exist independent media voices, but they often have ideological leanings.
- cookiecaper 9y agoThere is plenty of non-corporate output being made these days; it's just a matter of getting it to the masses. At one point, the internet offered a glimmer of hope that we could enjoy modern discourse outside of corporate influence, but our open publication platform has been effectively re-centralizing under the control of a small handful of MegaCorps like Google, Twitter, and Facebook, who, to varying degrees, all engage in censorship of social, political, and creative speech. I guarantee there are unknown content producers toiling away providing writings, commentary, and reporting far exceeding that available from the major media companies, but that we don't see it because BigMediaCo is paying a major attention broker like Google or Facebook to promote their offerings instead.
- tomcam 9y agoNothing stopping you. I pay for journalism from Michael Yon, The Guardian, Rebel Media, and others.
- inb4dangshitban 9y agoThe Guardian is unabashedly extremist as of late. Every "big important story" that I came across was so full of shit I couldn't even finish it.
- jpttsn 9y agoI've heard from someone who I think would know, that the editorial influence of owners on their newspapers' journalism has waned. Is it a matter of principle, or are you concerned with any tangible editorial slant?
- jgalt212 9y agoWaPo shouldn't cover Bezos or Amazon at all.
- Twirrim 9y agoAssuming we take the article at face value.. how does coverage compare to any other major company?
- robbrown451 9y agoI don't understand the title and its implications. Why is it relevant that Bezos owns the Washington Post, if the Post is no more guilty of bias than any other paper?
- B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago> no more guilty of bias than any other paper When 99% of the press beats up on a presidential candidate, and he still wins, people may smell a rat. 2016 was a fun year.
- elefanten 9y agoThe rat that smells here is one making ridiculous and patently absurd declarative statements about extremely recent history.
- starik36 9y agoI am not sure the poster from parent is all that wrong. The mainstream media (CNN , MSNBC, WaPo, NYT, HuffPo) straight up shilled for HRC during the election. CNN even provided HRC with questions for the debates.
- mtgx 9y agoI also wish that WashPost would disclose that its owner has contracts with the CIA, whenever it writes a story on the CIA (especially a positive one). Readers should know that there may be a pro-CIA bias in the story and a conflict of interest when publishing the story.
- jholman 9y agoOkay, what the hell. I googled "washington post amazon" and immediately found TWO news articles from the last 3 days, both critical of Amazon. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/birkenstock-ceo-accuses-amazon-of-modern-day-piracy/2017/07/25/24fa7644-7086-11e7-8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/birkenstock-... https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/is-amazon-getting-too-big/2017/07/28/ff38b9ca-722e-11e7-9eac-d56bd5568db8_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/is-amazon-getting-to... Am I missing something, or is TFA just straightforwardly wrong, to an embarrassing degree?
- sedachv 9y agoHere is an HN comment from jawns on one of the WP articles that tries to explain this: "This reverse submarine -- a critique of Amazon published by Jeff Bezos' paper -- tries to give what appears to be a biased news source a patina of unbiased objectivity by running what appears to be a piece that's critical of the thing it's thought to be biased toward." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14877216#14878179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14877216#14878179 Whether this is true or not actually does not matter as long as the conflict of interest is there.
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago"Substance is illusory, only appearance is substantial." It took me a while to put to words what I find objectionable about your view -- it's intellectual laziness masquerading as critical opinion. Rather than grappling with a tough problem, it advocates abandoning the problem completely into some sort of post truth fluff, then dresses that up to pose as wisdom. There's no critical analysis of how bias manifests or the tradeoffs of that bias versus other biases that might be introduced by other sets of circumstances -- there's no meat to that line of thinking. It's intellectual high-fructose corn syrup.
- meric 9y agoTangential to the topic at hand: The substance itself, if you look closely, is only yet another layer of appearance, slightly closer to the Truth - God.
- losteverything 9y agoI used to listen to FAIRs radio show. They clued me in to the sides of journalism i never knew existed. Nowadays though, wapo and other are just not as relevant. For example, HN has taught me via comments to expect counterfeit electronics on Amazon.. FAIR is still a net positive IMO
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- yalogin 9y agoIs this a statement about WShington Post or the other papers or all the papers together? Out of curiosity, is there anything critical to be written about Bezos specifically?
- didibus 9y agoThe article literally says that the Post was not less critical and scrutinizing of Amazon then other news paper, falling right in the middle. Therefore, I have to conclude the title is clickbait. And this makes me feel less confident that FAIR has a valid point in saying Amazon appears to evade scrutiny, and more likely to believe there's nothing scrupulous to report about Amazon, except for FAIR wanting to make the headlines.
- acalderaro 9y agoFiguring out whether or not Bezos is doing behind-the-scenes censorship of his own media outlet ultimately depends on the internal organizational structure of WaPo and Amazon. If the most senior leader of WaPo - the person in charge of greenlighting or pulling articles that get published - may be fired/terminated/reassigned by Bezos, or someone who Bezos oversees, then there is a conflict of interest that can't be ignored, and will always be inherent within the organizations until this is remedied. Now, just because there's a conflict of interest does not mean that shady reporting is occurring. But, we cannot definitively say that WaPo is unbiased towards Amazon, unless there is something about the internal controls that would separate Bezos from the ultimate decision-making.