Who Owns the Media: Amazon

Amazon 🐔🐔🐔🐔

Capitulation Rank: Obeying
Category: Online/Platform 
Market Cap: $2.213 trillion

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is one of the richest people in the world. His private holdings include companies with deep business ties to federal agencies. Chief among these entanglements is Blue Origin, Bezos’ space-exploration company, which has either secured or is pursuing billions of dollars in NASA contracts to launch a network of satellites and build rockets, a space station and a lunar lander — if Trump sees it worthwhile to reward Bezos’ loyalty. Amazon’s AWS cloud services do billions of dollars in business with the CIA, the Department of Defense, the Department of the Interior and the NSA. The company also sees sucking up to Trump as a necessary prerequisite for getting any government help to thwart antitrust enforcement, and weaken privacy, labor and consumer-safety protections.  

Following the Nov. 5 election, Bezos tweeted “big congratulations” to Trump, calling his win “an extraordinary political comeback.” He later told an interviewer that he’s “super optimistic” about the Trump administration. “I’m going to help him,” he added. Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and decided to spend $40 million to buy the rights to a documentary about Melania Trump that Melania herself will co-produce.

It’s by now obvious that Bezos is leveraging his ownership of the Washington Post to curry favor with Trump. Two weeks prior to the 2024 election, Bezos pulled the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, announcing that its editorial board would no longer endorse presidential candidates. He and his deputies at the paper have since blocked the publication of Post editorial cartoons and commentary about his cozying up to the administration. This series of managerial missteps has caused a number of high-level newsroom defections, and 250,000 readers canceled their subscriptions.

DEI Doublespeak:

Amazon complied in advance. It cut back its DEI programs in December 2024. It deleted DEI language from its 2024 annual report. In January 2025, the company stated that it would be halting DEI initiatives. And Amazon revised its positions on diversity in its “Our Positions” webpage.

What It Owns:

In addition to its online shopping business, the company owns dozens of online services and applications including 1-Click, Alexa Internet, Amazon Appstore, Amazon Cash, Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Web Services, Kindle Store, Twitch and Zappos. It also owns the production facility MGM Studios and Kuiper Systems, which is a planned Low-Earth Orbit satellite broadband-telecommunications-services company. It also owns a number of subsidiaries in the grocery, consumer electronics, health-care services, logistics and other industrial sectors.

Money & Influence Game:

Amazon paid lobbyists $19,140,000 in 2024, and Amazon employees made $8,193,808 in contributions to political candidates (2024 cycle). (SOURCE: Center for Responsive Politics)