Refusing blackmail

A curious – and alarming – story played out last week. I’m not sure I can summarize all the details, so here is the story on Daily Kos. I’ll try anyway. AMI is the company that publishes the National Equirer, a supermarket tabloid that publishes scandals of the rich and famous and doesn’t worry about whether they’re true. Except not stories about the nasty guy. In his case AMI would buy the story (some about another woman accusing him of assault) for the purpose of not publishing it. Because the person sold exclusive rights to AMI they can’t sell the story elsewhere. The story gets buried. Instead, AMI published stories of the nasty guy’s supposed greatness.

The second party in this story is Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post. The Post began running stories about AMI and its blackmail and extortion.

So AMI threatened Bezos, saying if the Post continues with these stories they’ll publish photos of Bezos in compromising situations – not good for Bezos in the middle of divorce proceedings. AMI especially objected to the Post publishing anything suggested AMI’s actions were “political.”

But Bezos didn’t cave. He made AMI’s threats public in a blog post and questioned how AMI got stolen personal information.

There is another big aspect to the case. Bezos and the Post were the employers of slain reporter Jamal Khashoggi. AMI has published favorable propaganda on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who, many intelligence sources have documented, ordered the killing of Khashoggi.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville made an important point:

As Bezos said in his piece, if this is what they feel like they can do to someone with his wealth and influence, what are these sadistic crooks going to use their continued freedom to do to dissidents who have nothing with which to fight back but their own voices?

This is likely a partial answer to why other media outlets are so deferential to the nasty guy. They’re being blackmailed by the likes of AMI.

I’m not a fan of Bezos. One becomes the richest man in the world by exploiting employees. So I now avoid Amazon (for the same reasons I avoid Walmart). Even so, I appreciate what Bezos did in this case.