According to Amazon, it was just a press release, which they pushed via the same channels they push any other press release. (See the update at the end of the article.)
Thanks for this. I'm absolutely in shock this process is so industrialized, and that it has apparently managed to survive so long, and even through fake news being a huge topic in US politics
I would guess because there’s no real coercion in it. A company has every interest to make it as easy as possible to news outlets to run the story and to so they write the whole thing and leave it to the journalists if they want to do anything else with it. Some - many - are lazy and just publish it verbatim.
Actual press releases are clearly labeled for the end consumer as press releases.
Yes but in that case it’s the news outlet that’s at fault. Most news orgs will at least say something like “Amazon released a statement today detailing…” If someone publishes the thing verbatim there’s no one to blame but the editor.