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Comment by swalsh | Hacker News Reader

Considering Jeff Bezos also owns the Washington Post, he could sell the laid off employees at the butcher counter, and still get a raving article written about it.

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I haven't looked into it, but I've heard it claimed a lot (including by the president)... does Bezos really retain editorial control over the paper? I'll admit I don't really know how newspapers work, but I feel like if there was an internal memo that said "Hey I'm Jeff, don't write bad shit about my other companies" someone would have leaked it by now.

Does Bezos actually control the messaging coming from The Washington Post?

He need not. The control need not be explicit, it might be as simple as admin isn't so hot about A's application for a promotion over B's because of that critical article, they may not realize it but it can be there. And, from B's perspective, s/he knows that A's critical article is a strike against them, hence why they refrained from writing it.

Not trying to draw a false equivalency, I'd say the ordering in terms of worseness is

    explicit censure >> reporters anticipate implicit bias
                     == admin shows implicit bias
                      > full journalistic freedom

He doesn't have to. The editor only needs consider what might happen if they hurt Bezos' businesses or reputation.

Perhaps a reporter, contemplating his next promotion, would reconsider writing headlines or articles that were critical of the owner. In this way, even unintentional censorship could still happen.

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