Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
There isn't much difference between the claim in your first sentence, and "public service," except for a judgment about mental state.
Now, if you said that Bezos owns the Post for the same reason that Amazon pays money to lobbyists (and you didn't say that one!), I would disagree.
In case someone here does think it, there's a pretty good empirical test. No business, or business mogul, is going to have any tolerance of criticism from lobbyists it pays. So if the Post publishes even a few negative articles about Bezos and/or Amazon, it proves to me that, at least in Bezos's not-insane mind, he is running it a public service rather than as a lobby for his interests. And -- here is the evidence of negative articles:
How Jeff Bezos Reacts to 'Negative' Amazon Articles in Washington Post
Amazon Key is Silicon Valley at its most out-of-touch |
I think that your assumption of no toleration to criticism is very much in error. Heck, Bezos even sells books highly critical to him on Amazon. Suppressing all negative articles is a very ham-fisted way of influencing public opinion. The normal way one measures such things is looking at percentage of positive and negative articles and compare that percentage to it's competitors.