WaPo absolutely exists to protect Amazon interests. Why do you think they hate Trump so much. Trump might interrupt trade with China or change its nature. Amazon's entire model is basically optimized trade with China within the current conditions. They've so over optimized things that there is hardly a market for anyone else to ever achieve their efficiency. If something changes with china the probability of someone else being able to squeeze into the market and beat them goes from zero to slightly above zero and that's just not acceptable. As long as they retain the status-quo they ensure market leadership for the next 50 years. One maybe should consider it embezzlement. WaPo like most news outlets today likely does paid hit and fluff pieces. That is that altering public perception is a service you can pay for that presumably is done at mutual exclusion with other operational priorities like delivering quality and trusted news that also effects their valuation. But WaPo's boss gets that service for free also at the expense of the company's value.