Jeff Bezos Weaponizes the Washington Post Homepage
The Washington Post’s website — owned, of course, by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — became a giant native ad Tuesday for Amazon. Bezos is using the paper as his personal megaphone to push back against criticism over wages and working conditions.
Jeff Bezos using native advertising on the homepage of the Amazon website to portray itself as a devoted supporter of a higher federal minimum wage. (Daniel Oberhaus, 2019 / Flickr)
A few years after Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, he said it was because it “is the newspaper in the capital city of the most important country in the world” and “has an incredibly important role to play in this democracy.”
Now, with more and more legislators scrutinizing his company’s business practices, his newspaper is playing that role — as an advertising platform in defense of Amazon.
On Tuesday, 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.
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