Do they draw straws to see who gets to ask the guy who signs their paychecks the tough questions? Politico:
Jeff Bezos’s Amazon did not respond to requests for comment from the Washington Post, the paper he owns, regarding a dispute between the bookseller and a major publishing house.
Amazon, the country’s largest bookseller, and Hachette, which publishes best-selling authors like Malcolm Gladwell and Stephen Colbert, have been locked in a public war over costs. As a result, Hachette has accused Amazon of hiking book prices and delaying deliveries of its books in order to discourage buyers.
Since The New York Times reported on the dispute earlier this month, media critics had been encouraging the Post to follow up with its own coverage of its owner’s company. It did so onMay 16 and again on May 23, noting that the feud had escalated to the point where Amazon had halted pre-sales on Hachette titles.
Yet when the Post’s Steven Mufson reached out to his boss’s company for comment for the first article, Amazon “would not comment,” according to the report. When he reached out for the second article, the company did not even respond.
The rest here.
One solution might be for media companies to print/air pieces from rivals when there is a conflict of interest.