The Bezos pictures and journalism: Big questions – The Wall Street Journal

DUBLIN – The story of Jeff Bezos' d***-pics has many angles. There is a political angle given the relationship between US president Donald Trump and the proprietors of the National Enquirer, who seem to have been trying to blackmail Bezos using the aforementioned nude selfies. Trump has repeatedly targeted Bezos in tweets and public statements, so some think this looks like an escalation of that feud. There's the question of how the Enquirer obtained the pictures – were their methods illegal? Was the government involved? And, of course, there are some important questions related to journalism. The Enquirer has managed to get away with a lot of bad behaviour by claiming that it is a news organisation and therefore entitled to the sweeping protections that the US constitution and courts afford to journalists. Critics have long said that this is just a shield and that the Enquirer is more of an advertiser-sponsored vehicle for blackmail and political manipulation. The Bezos case seems set to test the Enquirer's claims to journalistic integrity (if the pics are newsworthy, they should be published and not used as a blackmail threat, surely?) and to pose broader questions about how the news media gather their information.  – Felicity Duncan

Bezos vs. the Enquirer Could Be a Watershed

By John D. Stoll

(The Wall Street Journal) What to make of the battle between Jeff Bezos and the National Enquirer, which we will delight in calling the affair of Bezos, Pecker and de Becker? Under any circumstance, the world's richest man cheating on his wife with a sexy helicopter pilot, supported by racy texts and photos, would be a story for the National Enquirer. Tasteful Americans may wish it weren't so, but Mr. Bezos is a public figure in the Supreme Court's definition. His private life is presumably fair game.

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