November 12, 2024

Washington Post Finds Itself in the Middle of the Jeff Bezos Story

“I think they’ve finally woken up to the fact that their owner is a huge story,” said Mr. Pope, who has criticized the paper’s past coverage of Amazon as anemic. With the fight between Mr. Bezos and American Media, he said, “they’ve moved into an appropriately higher gear.”

Mr. Baron said the paper had not changed its approach to its coverage of Mr. Bezos or his business interests. Mr. Baron has said that he, along with other executives, talks with Mr. Bezos about “strategy” every two weeks or so, but that the discussions do not touch on the paper’s coverage. Mr. Bezos owns The Post separately from Amazon.

“Because I know full well that he won’t interfere, it’s not really difficult to cover him and Amazon at all,” Mr. Baron said in his statement. “In all the years of his ownership, there hasn’t been one report of his exerting influence, explicitly or implicitly, on our coverage.”

Frederick J. Ryan Jr., the publisher and chief executive of The Post, echoed those sentiments in a statement, and said Mr. Bezos had played no part in the editorial that praised his blog post.

“Jeff has always made it clear that he expects The Washington Post will act with complete independence, both in our news coverage and editorials, and treat him and his companies just as we would anyone else,” Mr. Ryan wrote. “We have never wavered from that position.”

Donald Graham, whose family had owned The Post for almost 80 years before he sold it to Mr. Bezos, said he was “delighted” by the editorial. “I agree with every word of it,” he said in an email.

He added, “Had they not editorialized, perhaps The Times would be doing a piece about the absence of such an editorial and what did that mean?”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/11/business/media/washington-post-jeff-bezos.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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