News media airing Amazon propaganda

[Long Dark Blues]

It's not a conspiracy. These are all local news stations that are picking up the story off the wire. Most of the hard news isn't generated by these people. It's created by bodies like Reuters or the AP, and then re-broadcast by local journalists like these around the English-speaking world.

This was clearly one of the trending headlines of the day.

I agree that it isn't a conspiracy, it's just plain ol' laziness.

Fresh out of college I was a DBA for a local news outlet, and I had to write scripts to connect to the wire to deliver the site the AP content.

It was protocol for the really big stories to be diverted to the editors' emails for rewording/retelling with a local flavor instead of just being spit out onto the site in the AP section.

I'm surprised the on-air programming doesn't do the same. Seems lazy.

 

[Madmick]

I agree that it isn't a conspiracy, it's just plain ol' laziness.

Fresh out of college I was a DBA for a local news outlet, and I had to write scripts to connect to the wire to deliver the site the AP content.

It was protocol for the really big stories to be diverted to the editors' emails for rewording/retelling with a local flavor instead of just being spit out onto the site in the AP section.

I'm surprised the on-air programming doesn't do the same. Seems lazy.

Exactly.

Interesting request from someone who didn't source their own claims. Here you go:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/...anda-segments-scripted-and-produced-by-amazon

I did source my claim. I provided a link to the very type of service that is typically employed by news agencies to find trending content to cover. This very footage, provided by Amazon, which I thought was apparent by the fact it showed footage from inside an Amazon warehouse, is an example of this kind of story, exactly as I illuminated.

The Amazon PR department did put out this piece, but they were not the wire vendor who sold the story (or rather the service) to the news agencies that chose to run it. Amazon shared their raw footage to disseminate to news services to the "BusinessWire":
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200521005268/en
Here is Businesswire's home page:
https://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/

As you can see, this is a business that sells the service of providing business news on a wire to news organizations for them to tap as they see fit. It is a media asset owned by Berkshire Hathaway: Warren Buffet's company (not Jeff Bezos's). Amazon didn't hide this from the local news agencies. Their logo is attached to the story, and their contact information is also shared.

As @superking pointed out these are just the 11 agencies that online trawlers found who were so lazy they chose to read a scripted presentation of the story verbatim. Nobody forced them to do that. They could have authored their own introduction.

 

[MicroBrew]

Welcome to the corporate world?

I am not a fan of Bezos but I fail to see what the issue is here. It is perfectly normal for news media to report on the same news, cause reporting on news is what they do. People are using Amazon to shop because they don't want to go out or find better deals online, so the media reported on it . I am not seeing how reporting this fact is controversial.

 

[TheFirstEMP]

They are so evil and I can't stop giving them money. It's like an abusive relationship.

I’ve moved away from Amazon and purchase from independent sites and look for Made in the USA products as well.

 

[Not A Theist]

They are so evil and I can't stop giving them money. It's like an abusive relationship.

Yes you can stop. You just choose not to. Even if there is the odd thing you buy from them you can't get elsewhere or find an alternative for, I bet you it's a small percentage of the business you do with them. It's a reality that convenience and swift gratification are far more central values, in our culture, than most of our most loudly professed ethical ones. Usually, the next step beyond your current position of "I know they're evil, but I just gotta have that two day shipping! I have no choice!" is to ignore your own role in making them what they are and demand some higher power dismantle the company. Somehow that has become far more easy in our culture than exercising self control and recognizing personal responsibility.

 

[SBJJ]

MEDIA!

WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR

 

[Jesus X]

damn amazon has a lot of power

 

[Jesus X]

They are so evil and I can't stop giving them money. It's like an abusive relationship.

the only thing I can do is not purchase things from china on amazon but sometimes they don't list the products origin or make it easy to see.

 

[Jesus X]

Probably just all regurgitating the same AP article, this is not new, just easier to spot these days.

they are reading from an amazon made script there is a picture of it in other videos like this one. it was written by one of amazons employees and emailed to the reporters.

 

[Jesus X]

Like, they couldn't each tweak the script just a little bit?

I don't think they could because amazon gave them a specific script if you watch my video in my previous post.

 

[ElKarlo]

Reminiscent of that Sinclair broadcast

Man, decentralized control of media may be the most important constitutional liberty in America.

There is no such thing as Democracy without a free press

Word. There are basically what, three media corporations now? It's scary that they can in speed decide a narrative and basically stick to it.

Remember how after Iraq was beaten so quickly all the news agencies were beating the war drums on Syria or north Korea?

 

[Fluffernutter]

Isn't Jay Carney, the former WH press secretary, the head of PR for Amazon?

 

[Fluffernutter]

 

[xcvbn]

Word. There are basically what, three media corporations now? It's scary that they can in speed decide a narrative and basically stick to it.

Remember how after Iraq was beaten so quickly all the news agencies were beating the war drums on Syria or north Korea?

6 corporations control 90% of all media

It’s just pure manipulation and propaganda to serve the structures of power. Anything outside the bounds of their narrative control gets attacked, subverted, or just outright ignored.

Look at the lockdown protests and how they’re amplified compared to workers striking. One gets covered daily the other is hardly mentioned, if at all. And when the strikes are mentioned they’re sure to include long winded responses written by anti-labor think tanks.

This Amazon fellatio piece is exactly that.

 

[ElKarlo]

6 corporations control 90% of all media

It’s just pure manipulation and propaganda to serve the structures of power. Anything outside the bounds of their narrative control gets attacked, subverted, or just outright ignored.

Look at the lockdown protests and how they’re amplified compared to workers striking. One gets covered daily the other is hardly mentioned, if at all. And when the strikes are mentioned they’re sure to include long winded responses written by anti-labor think tanks.

This Amazon fellatio piece is exactly that.

It's six? I guess if you count the NYT it does get up that high.
But yes, seems some colossians here. Amazon is an awful company and should be condemned for destroying so much for the benefit of so few. Yet there aren't any articles besides some one offs. They die out quickly. While as you said lock down protests have hourly updates.
I think it's awful and wish there was a non violent way of changinf this
I personally feel that the Walmart heirs and Jeff need to have 90% of their wealth stripped from them. And I'm a pretty right wing guy btw

 

[ElKarlo]

More so to draw sympathy and acceptance from Amazon shoppers who would otherwise be appalled at the conditions they treat their workers

I'm amazed at how people get mad about racism and how the one percent and corporations are exploitative, yet they order all their crap from the Amazon. And Amazon if they could would hire Pinkertons to shoot at strikers

 

[brother mouzone]

It's not a conspiracy. These are all local news stations that are picking up the story off the wire. Most of the hard news isn't generated by these people. It's created by bodies like Reuters or the AP, and then re-broadcast by local journalists like these around the English-speaking world.

This was clearly one of the trending headlines of the day.

So what you're saying is that this could have been done for just about any news segment that is picked up off the wire, but since Amazon bad we end up with people looking for this kind of video edit to create this narrative?

Doesn't seem so surprising to me that Amazon fear/hate would lead to this

 

[Losfer Words]

Fnord

 

[Madmick]

So what you're saying is that this could have been done for just about any news segment that is picked up off the wire, but since Amazon bad we end up with people looking for this kind of video edit to create this narrative?

Doesn't seem so surprising to me that Amazon fear/hate would lead to this

Yes, though I only seek to clarify; not to criticize the criticism. I think it's a good thing that people are sensitive to the primary source of what they consume as news. The primary source of this story was Amazon's PR department itself. Furthermore, Berkshire Hathaway is a major corporation, and the fact they control a wire that disseminates many different stories is something else the public should understand. More scrutiny of the wires themselves is not a bad thing.

The biggest problem here are the lazy news departments whose anchors witlessly broadcast Amazon's propaganda (and it certainly is that) by reading the script. This lends a patina of authority it impartiality to the story itself by adopting these anchors as proxies behind this invisible veil as mouthpieces for the company.

There is no malicious intent here, and certainly not the puppeteering inferred by too many in the thread before I came to edify the forum on how news departments work, but I still agree there is cause for criticism. Major companies shouldn't be wielding this much control over how their conduct is covered. These journalists should be distancing themselves, and at least mentioning to the public the story is merely Amazon's claims.

 

[Andy Capp]

A better analogy are the supermarkets. There is an illusion of choice. You think all these different news stations, like all the different food choices, represent a deeply diverse landscape. It is not so. Virtually every frozen pizza or snack you see is owned and sold by one of a half dozen companies. Nearly every carton of milk or cut of meat across the country comes from one of six different dairy plants or butchering slaughterhouses. This is the reality of our national news.

If this is true, and I'm not saying it isn't, you really have let your country go to completely to shit with the corporate consolidation thing. Virtually all our dairy is made within 100 miles of here.