The three most prominent US newspapers haven’t run a critical investigative piece on Jeff Bezos’ company Amazon in almost two years, a FAIR survey finds.
A review of 190 articles from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the Bezos-owned Washington Post over the past year paints a picture of almost uniformly uncritical—ofttimes boosterish—coverage. None of the articles were investigative exposes, 6 percent leaned negative, 54 percent were straight reporting or neutral in tone, and 40 percent were positive, mostly with a fawning or even press release–like tone.
The last major investigative piece on Amazon in the three most prestigious newspapers appeared almost two years ago (New York Times, 8/15/15).
The last major investigative piece we found in any of these three publications was a 4,500-word critique of Amazon’s labor practices in the New York Times (8/16/15) almost two years ago. Considering that Amazon is the fourth-most-valuable company in the world, with a 43 percent (and growing) share of all US online commerce, it’s a striking absence of journalistic scrutiny.
The line between straight reporting and fawning coverage wasn’t always clear, given the nature of technology journalism, but, in general, a distinction was drawn when reporting on Amazon’s latest moves featured no criticism or contrary third-party input, and the article was mostly indistinguishable from a press release.
Examples of this type of breathless corporate coverage, from a one-week span in 2016, included “Amazon’s Latest Weapon in the E-Commerce Wars: Its Own Air Force” (Washington Post, 8/6/16), “Amazon Reveals ‘Prime Air’ Cargo Jet” (Wall Street Journal, 8/5/16) and “Think Amazon’s Drone Delivery Idea Is a Gimmick? Think Again” (New York Times, 8/10/16). The most embarrassing example of outright PR pablum was this Washington Post “exclusive look,” based primarily on futurist porn speculation (3/2/17):
Amazing how a Bezos-owned paper got an “exclusive” on Jeff Bezos!
One can review the list and determinations here. We included articles about Amazon.com, Inc. (reviews of Amazon TV shows or stories about Amazon bestsellers, for example, were not included) that were significant enough for the outlets’ respective Twitter accounts to post the stories.
One might expect the Washington Post—the personal property of Bezos—to provide more favorable coverage of its owner’s company, but the Post’s level of uncritical praise, though very high, was roughly par for the course. About 95 percent of Post coverage ranged from neutral (43 percent) to positive/fawning (48 percent) in tone.
Ninety-three percent of New York Times coverage of Amazon and 94 percent of the Wall Street Journal’s ranged from straight news to press release. Fifty-seven percent of the Times‘ coverage and 31 percent of the Journal‘s could be characterized as somewhat to extremely flattering. (Note that the Post‘s level of positive coverage fell in between the two other papers’.)
One of the major reasons Amazon gets such glowing coverage is that tech journalism is traditionally not a very critical vertical. Tech company X reveals it’s doing Y or will do Z—that is, by the beat’s definition, newsworthy, and the press release is rewritten, with some added commentary from friendly talking heads and market analysts. Because it’s “tech,” the political or labor implications come in a distant second to the shiny-object quality of the beat.
Occasionally issues such as privacy or anti-trust or union unrest will be touched on, but this is usually in response to legal action taken by the state or by activists, not as a topic raised by reporters themselves. On a case by case basis, this is understandable (clearly not every tech write-up has to be an exposé), but on the whole, tech journalism is a media landscape dominated by corporate stenography.
With Amazon’s stock surging to well over $1,000 a share, and its head recently crowned the richest person in the world, the stakes for putting Amazon and Bezos in a critical light couldn’t be higher. Yet time and again, the pillars of US media provide them all the critical rigor a high school paper typically provides the spring dance committee.
Breathless
Yet still blowing smoke
Really interesting to contrast this with Uber. Both are successful tech companies that are extremely popular with customers but with questionable practices towards employees. Yet, Uber gets absolutely brutal coverage in the media, and Amazon largely gets a pass.
The most critical piece this article could come up with is that there is nothing critical written about Jeff Bezos by the entire press. This is so Meta.
I would have liked it if you actually shed light on, at least, one legitimate topic on Bezos that deserves criticism. Perhaps we should give him flak because he’s the richest man on Earth, right?
Washington Post, owned by Bezos, featured here all the time.. Pretty sure the 600M$ CIA Amazon cloud contract was mentioned on fair.org. Amazon buying whole foods and incredible size in online commerce https://fair.org/home/amazon-now-has-monopoly-power-in-online-commerce/
Outside fair.org, probably can find articles on how it treats workers.(like http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/07/amazon-warehouse-workers-lunch-breaks_n_5283329.html) Or about the behavior of their devices and SAAS, for instance. How they’re destroying privacy. How here too they’re often giant players.
Amazon remotely deleted the book “Animal farm”, by Orwell, of all people http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html
This article only looks at a bunch of very prominent sources. Stuff about Amazon *can* be found.
That’s akin to Clear Channel banning of all things Cat Stevens’s song Peace Train in the lead up to the catastrophe in Iraq, 2003. Concomitant with which they signed Rush Lies A Lot to a 6-year, $256 million contract. $800,000 a week every week. That’s like winning the lottery every week for six years.
How about MRR that Amazon hasn’t turned a profit in about one quarter of its existence. Not including the one in which it got a grant from the CIA of $600 million? That its business model is to drive out of business any other. According to the capitalist diktat of grow or die? We should give him flak because he’s the richest man, if such he is, on Earth. Good on you for capitalizing the name of our Mother. But yeah, that would be a start.
I can’t believe you’d write a story criticizing journalists for not reporting on Amazon’s problems without mentioning Amazon’s problems.
What are they not covering?
The news reports; they shouldn’t seek out negative stories. If you go looking for negativity, that’s not journalism, that’s confirmation bias.
Is it just me .. or does he look alot like Dr Evil .. ‘Mr Powers that will be 1 Million Dollars … Dr Evil .. OK Mr Powers that will 1 Billion Dollars Muhaaaaa Muhaaa!!! ( evil laugh repeats)’……..
Of the film Jack Black Teaches Kindergartners Rock n Roll? It looks like him. But where’s his superhero cape?
Shared on Facebook. Twitter too. Robert McChesney characterizes Bezos as a bully in his book Digital Divide. It would be laughable except for the extreme poverty Mr Bezos’s wealth engenders, that he’s making strides to colonize the moon. Who’d want to live on the moon? No trees. Ask a tulip if it would like to live on the moon. No volition. And if it had? Living on the moon. No tulips. That’s where Bezos ought to live. He’s so eager for wasting his fantastic wealth. Wealth corrupts by definition. Look at Rachel Maddow. Henry Miller wrote that anything money touches it of necessity corrupts. And that the only hope was a moneyless society.
When a business gets too big, it becomes just another Jabba the Hutt. It is very worrisome that Bezos is trying to capture the market on everything. I have never bought anything from Amazon and I never will. I go to local small business for books and why would anyone buy clothes oon line?
I am also pretty freaked out about the drone business that this strange man wnats to start for delivery.
I guess a lot of birds will die for Amazon sales, and I wonder who will be the first American to die in death by falling from the sky delivery drone.
It is also very worrisome to read about the workers in the packing houses for delivery of crappy items. I wish American made something besides bombs and killer planes. The workers in the warehouses are treated like disposable serfs and Mr Bezos is not responsible for them at all as they are suncontracted out to temp agencies——–I wish we could outsource that strane bezos man to the moon, or maybe he could impress the world with a way to regrow hair, That would really impress people and be useful too. I wonder when he will pay a great deal of money to change the name of the actual Amazon river to the Bezos…… when that happens we will know that the world is making its last Ozymandias stand for sure