But billionaires don’t buy newspapers to run them as public goods, and smart billionaires don’t buy newspapers to make money. Billionaires buy newspapers for influence. That is the point. The Post is among the most influential in the nation. Second- or third-most, depending on which party is in power. Buying the Washington Post is sort of like retaining the best-connected lobbyist in Washington, in a parallel world in which lobbyists are universally praised for their value to functioning democracies. Bezos needn’t even exercise his influence in the vulgar fashion of a Murdoch. He can merely staff the paper with people attuned to his worldview and allow the opinion page to evolve to reflect his interests naturally. (And honestly, the interests of a rich “socially liberal” libertarian-leaning Democrat are already pretty well-reflected by the Washington Post editorial page.) The very reasonable fear isn’t that Bezos will fire all the reporters — he’s a “long-term value” guy, not a cost-slashing Sam Zell — but that Bezos will use his newly bought influence to lobby for federal policies that align with his financial interests. He does not particularly want to pay taxes, and he’d strongly prefer it if his cheap labor remained cheap, which is to say non-union.
Posted on: Tue, 06 Aug 2013 15:37:10 +0000