Moving merchandise for Amazon in the Washington Post.
Amazon.com rang up its biggest sales day ever on Tuesday as shoppers hit up its Prime Day event, a day-long pageant of deals available only to members of its Prime subscription program.
That was the lead on a news story in the Washington Post (7/13/16)—owned, of course, by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
And the story discloses that parenthetically: “(Jeffrey P. Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, owns the Washington Post.)” But there seems to be some confusion: While welcome, disclosure is not an inoculation. We still look askance at a news story with lines like, “That the sale drew such strong spending from shoppers for a second year suggests that Amazon is making inroads establishing this as an appointment summer shopping event.”
When the closest thing to a critical angle is to note that some people were angry that a challenging checkout process meant “they weren’t able to take advantage of the deals,” we’ve gone beyond the sort of a problem that mere disclosure can fix.
Janine Jackson is the program director of FAIR, and the producer and host of CounterSpin.
Messages can be sent to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com, or via Twitter @washingtonpost. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
A more apt heading
Amazon’s Ad Budget Saves Big!
Oh I am sure if you send them (amazon) your displeasure, they will refund you your ‘inoculation’, minus a stocking fee. /Snark.
While it is hard to not like the fact they do tend to help small business’s, buying through amazon we should always take any ‘news’ they put out with a grain of salt. Sadly, since Amazon now owns Wapo, we need a salt shaker….
Missing from this story is FAIR’s usual survey of other news media. Was WAPO the only medium to report on Prime Day? Or did other papers and news outlets also report? If they did, WAPO can claim that this event really was news.
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