How America’s most infamous tabloid came to blackmail the world’s richest man

The ‘insanity’ of America’s most infamous tabloid blackmailing the world’s richest man has dished up one of the juiciest stories of the year, but there’s a lot more at play here.

It takes a lot to shock these days. But the unedifying spectacle of the most infamous tabloid magazine in America blackmailing the world’s richest man with dirty photos he sent to his mistress was always going to make for juicy headlines.

Jeff Bezo’s tabloid scandal continues to make headlines weeks after the story hit the National Enquirer front page. Picture: AP

Throw in the decision by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to pre-empt the threat to publish his “below the belt” selfies with a webpost of his own that linked the efforts of media company chief David Pecker (that’s his actual name) to Pecker’s good friend, President Donald Trump, and you have perhaps the best, albeit most excruciating, ingredients for the story that is 2019.

But dig beneath the near-universal applause Bezos received for last week’s explosive, 2200-word post on Medium, in which he called out the blackmail — complete with intimately detailed emails — and there is a lot more at play than just a clever slapdown by the woke businessman Trump calls “Jeff Bozo”.

THE LEFT’S UNLIKELY HERO

As the tech guy who took Amazon from an online bookstore in his Seattle garage to one of the biggest companies in the world, Bezos is an unlikely hero to some on the left.

After all, Amazon didn’t just accidentally reshape modern retail to become the second ever trillion-dollar company after Apple.

The National Enquirer story broke late January with Bezos on the cover. Picture: AP

And it is accused by a raft of parties — including the many it has put of out business — of using monopolistic and predatory practices to further its aims.

The company is also not adverse to a bit of blackmail itself, although Amazon just calls it business. As observed by Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat last week, the Enquirer scandal has just shown the rest of the world that “you don’t pressure Amazon. It only goes the other way around”.

Citing controversy in his hometown where Bezos stopped building a city development because Amazon opposed a new tax proposal, he wrote: “Nice economy you’ve got there, Seattle. Shame if something happened to it”.

Similarly, when initial chafing from some New Yorkers over government-subsidised plans to establish a second Amazon HQ in Queens turned into serious scrutiny of the $4.25 billion sweetheart tax breaks on offer, there were some timely pieces quoting unnamed Amazon bosses about how the deal wasn’t quite done yet. Yesterday, the whole thing fell over and Amazon announced it would not be building a second HQ.

The New York Post with a headline referring to Jeff Bezos claims he was blackmailed. Picture: AP

“Like a petulant child, Amazon insists on getting its way or takes its ball and leaves,” Michael Gianaris, a Democrat state senator who opposed the plan, told The New York Times.

“The only thing that happened here is that a community that was going to be profoundly affected by their presence started asking questions.”

Bezos is widely considered a champion of free speech, after he purchased the Washington Post in 2013 for $350 million and invested further millions into its journalism. The paper, and its rival The New York Times, have also arguably profited more from the “Trump bump” of increased subscriptions than any other outlets.

MEDIA WAR WITH TRUMP

The Washington Post is at the heart of Bezos’s war with Trump, who regularly targets the paper’s rigorous coverage of his administration — alongside other mainstream media including broadcasters CNN and NBC as well as the New York Times — as “fake news”.

That there are close ties between the National Enquirer and Trump is well known. Trump has for decades been close to Pecker, who in turn has done an immunity deal with federal prosecutors over his part in facilitating a hush money payment to Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who was paid by former Trump fixer Michael Cohen to keep details of their alleged affair secret. McDougal was paid in the lead-up to the 2016 election, a potential violation of campaign financing laws, and the matter is ongoing. Cohen will shortly begin a three-year prison sentence for arranging the payment to McDougal and others to porn star Stormy Daniels, with the intention of influencing the election. Trump has denied relationships with both women.

Jeff Bezos is the world’s richest man. Picture: AP

Bezos is adamant the Post retains its editorial independence and chose not to use the platform to break the news of the Enquirer’s alleged extortion.

Bezos says the Enquirer and its parent company, American Media Inc, were driven by two factors: the investigation he began into how his text messages to mistress Lauren Sanchez came to be published last month, and the Washington Post’s probe into the murder of one its columnists by a Saudi Arabian hit squad.

“It’s unavoidable that certain powerful people who experience Washington Post news coverage will wrongly conclude I am their enemy,” Bezos wrote.

“President Trump is one of those people, obvious by his many tweets. Also, The Post’s essential and unrelenting coverage of the murder of its columnist Jamal Khashoggi is undoubtedly unpopular in certain circles.

David Pecker, Chairman and CEO of American Media. Picture: AP

“(Even though The Post is a complexifier for me, I do not at all regret my investment. The Post is a critical institution with a critical mission. My stewardship of The Post and my support of its mission, which will remain unswerving, is something I will be most proud of when I’m 90 and reviewing my life, if I’m lucky enough to live that long, regardless of any complexities it creates for me.)”

While there was even some misguided talk of a “government agency” being involved in the leak to the Enquirer, the source emerged in recent days to be much closer to home, with several outlets reporting it was Sanchez’s Hollywood agent brother who had handed the material over for publication.

President Donald Trump (L) Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (C) and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (R) at the White House. Picture: AFP

That many continue to point to the Trump factor in the Bezos scandal is proof that “our press seems increasingly helpless in the face of evidence-free red herrings aimed at its erogenous zones”, said the Wall St Journal’s Holman Jenkins.

Or, in another statement you probably never thought you’d read, Tom Arnold, the washed up comedian who used to be married to Roseanne Barr and who himself sued the Enquirer over detailed coverage of their divorce, is absolutely right.

“If you had told Roseanne and me, when we were suing back then, that one day the Enquirer would be caught up with Jeff Bezos over pictures of his penis,” Arnold told the Hollywood Reporter last week.

“And that the president of the United States would be defending the Enquirer versus the guy who owns The Washington Post — this is insane.”