Media criticism sometimes involves reading between the lines, assessing the layered meanings of journalistic rhetoric, or considering what’s left unsaid in a given conversation. But we shouldn’t be numb to all the times media problems hit you like a sock in the jaw.
Andrew Perez and David Sirota (Jacobin, 5/27/21): “Hours after the Washington Post reported that the DC attorney general is bringing an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, the front page of the Post’s website was festooned with native ads from Amazon portraying itself as a devoted supporter of a higher federal minimum wage.”
That was the case when readers opened the Washington Post online recently to find a full page “native” ad—that’s the kind designed to look like news—from Amazon (Jacobin, 5/27/21). Whose owner Jeff Bezos owns the Post and soon MGM (Washington Post, 5/26/21), among much else.
Blended in with the Post‘s banner and “Democracy Dies in Darkness” tagline, readers got text about how Amazon supports a raise in the federal minimum wage and has been paying its workers $15 an hour since 2018. A big picture showed an African-American employee and her child talking about how Amazon‘s generosity is allowing them to move to a bigger home.
Never mind that, as many could tell you, the company was dragged kicking and screaming to that wage increase (Jacobin, 10/2/18); that they continue to fund groups that strenuously oppose a $15 minimum wage (Jacobin, 5/27/21), like the US Chamber of Commerce; that they have vigorously and vehemently opposed union organizing (New York Times, 3/16/21)—and that no wage can justify the dangerous and degrading conditions Amazon is reported to subject many of its workers to (Intercept, 3/25/21).
Just as it was selling Post readers on the notion that it’s lifting folks to a better life, Amazon was being cited by OSHA for a rate of serious workplace injuries nearly double that at other employers (CNBC, 6/1/21). A front-page, “truthy-looking” ad about corporate benevolence is surely designed to deflect from such troubling realities.
It didn’t prevent the paper (6/1/21) from reporting on the OSHA findings, though that story contained another kind of weirdness we’ve come to take for granted: a summary statement that “Amazon declined to make any executives available for interviews on its workplace injury data.”
Featured image: Ad lobbying for Amazon on the homepage of the Washington Post (via Jacobin, 5/27/21).
Certain devices have been invented throughout history which can effectively solve problems like Bezos. I hope someday he becomes intimately acquainted with how these devices can be put to excellent use, Mike Liston
FAIR should not be a forum for veiled death threats, Mr. 2nd Amendment dog whistler.
However, Homer:
Perhaps, GUY he was referring to the fact that so many employees of Bezos have difficulty surviving at their work situation . That covers everything from needing to urinate while on the job–but having the urinal so far away that workers can’t make it to their destination in time.
Or perhaps re: the recent vote for Bezos employees to unionize—that the US mail box was located inside the workplace with a video camera pointed on it and watching who was voting. But too, I am wondering and worrying about the possible purchase of MGM—will actors, writers , directors, artists of all types…..will these once union actors find their work and wages to be jettisoned to a lowly new level at a new MGM?
Sometimes human beings can garner so much wealth and power, that life can take a nosedive. Try reading up on Croesus —– the richest man in the ancient world! )
Thank you for this article, Janine.
I am curious to know what influence the Gates Foundation has on the New York Times as I heard that they have made large donations to the NYT.
Does the the Washington Post still have close ties to the CIA?
If we’re pay-walled out of TRUE facts, Bezos sells us what we believe… PropR’Not allows us all to discuss, as REALITY; does that make us uppity deplorables, conspiracist know nothings? Eager to Believe our glorious President Joe Biden® is a crook, who’d used the tragic deaths of his wife & son for political gain; helped coup Ukraine, then threaten their investigation of Kerry’s son and his? That AFL-CIA’s Stu Appelbaum helped break effective unionization of Amazon’s serfs, peeing into Gatorade bottles, “mindfully” wearing wrist transponders, to hasten their efforts to assist their robot masters, fail & be replaced by chronic COVID indentured or undocumented 1099’d gig contractors? Jeff’s reality is ‘Murikas FUTURE, duh?
Remember, Bernie & AOC depriving NYC of Jeff’s ginormous Queens “Fulfillment Headquarters,” just before those in Allentown and Hazleton exceeded Philly in community-spread COVID cases? As Bezos, Bloomberg & bloviating billionaires bought Biden, BEAT Bernie by SuperSpreader Tuesday? Omidyar’s folks re-platformed; FaceBook, Google & Twitter selectively cut or de-monitized abhorrent truth, inconvenient facts were SEO’d away from Yuppie’s iPhone, blog aggregators’ K Street’s trolls propagated LOTE, so the choice remained THEIRS? Disney, Fox, Viacom, AT&T… heck, ComCast shovels both “sides” their diametrically dopplegangster lies, from the same building! Nothing, fundimentally, will change… for THEM!
Well, I remember ONLY Katie Halper, covering Tio Thomas infectng lifelong, loyal, mostly older “minority” Democratic primary voters as Cuomo, Trump & de Blasio forked “essential workers” to FIRE, PhARMA & private equity ravaged “health systems” infected vulnerable loved-ones, commuters & coworkers (as Bezos mysteriously morphed into the wealthiest oligarch of ALL?) As homes, equity, W4 jobs were all harvested & their disruptive Great Reset became insurrectionist conspiracy theory; as late night comedy shows reminded us how INSANE we were for believing what we’d just lived through, seen and experienced, which was delusional RooskiBot divisiveness. LOOK, over HERE! We’ll tell you, what to PANIC over, next (as our NASDAQ portfolios jump >80% in 6-7 months!)
https://www.dailyposter.com/obama-labor-secretary-joins-anti-union-law-firm/
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax
https://www.dailyposter.com/hiding-the-union-busters/
https://raymcgovern.com/2021/06/04/why-major-media-mostly-mum-on-hunters-laptop/