Tom Fitzpatrick: Hands up if you support the right to ask questions

The media must always always aspire to do better when holding powerful people and businesses to account

Guests at Donald Trump's inauguration, from left: Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, and Elon Musk. Picture: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/Getty

A decade ago Jeff Bezos was a man on a mission.

Inordinately wealthy, he possessed many treasures, including Amazon and the Washington Post. 

He was admired for disrupting and cornering the market in online shopping. He also embodied the blurring line in the US between vast personal wealth, media ownership, and political influence.

But there are some things money can’t buy, and when it came to giving a witty retort at short notice, one of the world’s wealthiest men was forced to do what he did best… outsource his work.

In December 2015, Donald Trump had notions, derided by many, of becoming US president.

He weaponised social media with increasingly bellicose rhetoric to belittle and disparage opponents. 

One man in his sights at that time was Bezos, whom he attacked on what was then known as Twitter.

Trump alleged Bezos had purchased the Post to “keep Amazon's taxes down” as a tax shelter.

Bezos was unhappy. As former Post editor Martin Baron recalls in his book Collision of Power, Bezos “saw a prospective Trump presidency as a reason for dread”.

He sought counsel from a former White House press secretary under Obama, Jay Carney: “Feel like I should have a witty retort… Useful opportunity (patriotic duty) to do my part to deflate this guy who would be a scary prez...”

The eventual retort was a mocking tweet that proposed sending Donald Trump to space via Bezos’s private space company.

Fast forward to October 2016, and Bezos was doubling down, saying Trump’s actions “erode democracy”.

“The appropriate thing for a presidential candidate is to say ‘I’m running for the highest office in the most important country in the world, please scrutinize me.’ That’s not what we’ve seen.” 

In February 2017, only a month or so into Trump’s first presidency, the Washington Post introduced a new slogan: “Democracy dies in darkness”.

Almost a decade on, and Bezos has changed his tune on scrutiny. 

He and his partner Lauren Sánchez were seated among the billionaire tech supporters on Trump’s right hand as he was inaugurated in January. 

He had already left his mark on Trump’s re-election. By refusing to endorse Kamala Harris, as planned by Washington Post editorial staff, he made a radical shift from the newspaper’s usual stance.

More than a quarter of a million readers cancelled their subscriptions within days and high-profile staff resigned, following his decision.

Tech billionaires have continued to embrace Donald Trump's regime.

A subsequent directive that the Post’s opinion pages would “be writing every day in support and defence of personal liberties and free markets” and that opposition viewpoints would not be considered provoked further disquiet and solidified the notion that his editorial interference was no longer questioned. 

The opinion section editor, David Shipley, departed soon after.

Bezos's mockery of Trump in 2015 is, by all accounts, something he regrets.

Why the about-face on a man he thought would be a “disaster” as president?

Writing in the New York Times, Julia Angwin astutely pointed to the huge leverage now required for these tech companies to continue to thrive and pocket their owners billions.

On Trump’s inauguration night, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg posted a photo of himself and his wife Priscilla with the caption “feeling optimistic and ready to celebrate”, emphasising the embrace of the billionaire oligarchs of the nascent regime.

But artificial intelligence and the race to be its leader, coupled with scrutiny of these companies’ vast resources and disregard for safety for minors, vulnerable people, elected officials… they’re already starting to cost.

In Ireland alone, huge fines have been imposed on the likes of Meta (€251m in 2024) and LinkedIn (€310m) and let’s not forget Apple’s tax bills. 

Angwin writes that in the EU, Google has been fined around €7.7bn in the past decade.

These fines are paltry when considered in the context of the companies and their owners’ enormous wealth (Google made around €270bn in revenue last year), but they still hurt.

Any reputational damage done to these technology firms is limited.

Young people use their platforms with wanton abandon while older generations fret about the harms. 

Newspapers such as this one have no alternative but to reach readers on the same platforms.

And the odds continue to be stacked in tech bosses’ favour.

More than 80% of Irish adults read established media outlets every day, but 85% of all digital advertising revenue goes to large tech firms.

While people are continuing to use trusted sources for news, media outlets here and around the world are forced to do far more with far less.

The latest battle between tech firms and established media lies in AI.

Tech companies are investing hundreds of billions to improve their capability while stealing content written by journalists and published by media worldwide to train AI to become the newsrooms of the future.

At a session for politicians in Leinster House this week, media leaders attempted to explain to politicians why this was unjust and why the media needed a fair slice of the pie.

Truth vs version of truth

What is happening, it was said, resembles the truth being replaced with a version of the truth.

Many of the TDs and senators understand the urgency. 

Any of them who use digital tools to communicate will have been abused on those same tools, some seriously threatened and some defamed.

Several have been stung by fake ads using their identities for nefarious purposes on social media platforms.

They include Taoiseach Micheál Martin who was forced to take legal action to try and unmask the perpetrators (he later said they originated in Belarus and Russia from stolen credit cards).

But it was Galway West TD Catherine Connolly who, perhaps without meaning to, hit the nail on the head as to why titles such as this one need to survive.

She said she supported the media and its role in democracy, but felt it didn’t always hold the powerful to account as much as it should.

She was right. The media, and editors like me are forced to decide which stories we pursue every day, particularly when resources are stretched.

We must always aspire to do better when holding powerful people and businesses to account. 

And we get it wrong sometimes, there’s no point in saying otherwise.

But the question must be asked of our politicians and our public: We live in a digital world where technology companies control almost every facet of our lives, bank enormous profits while using algorithms to decide which news they want the public to see, and increasingly act with impunity. Why would anyone subscribe to that?

And the crucial part here? Ms Connolly was, thankfully, allowed to express her view without fear of reprisal from the people she was criticising.

And she was able to say what she said directly to the people responsible because they were sat there in the room with her.

This year the Irish Examiner has published reports on failing provisions for special schools, dirty drinking water, drug cartels, undersea cables, failing ecosystems, housing shortages, and the cause and effect of winter storms.

We’ve sent reporters to Brussels as the EU’s transatlantic relationship soured; to the US to profile the undocumented Irish in America and speak to Trump; to Lebanon and to South Sudan where humanitarian crises play out. 

We’ve published criticism of politicians of every political stripe for stances that conflict with ordinary democratic values and sometimes offered them a platform to commit to those values.

We’ve published letters which take an opposite view to those of our writers'. 

We’ve been threatened with legal action repeatedly. But our staff are still committed to the journalistic principles that were launched on the front page of this newspaper 184 years ago.

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Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos are celebrating their nuptials in June. Picture: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP

In June, Bezos and Sánchez are expected to take over much of Venice as they celebrate their nuptials. 

Their plans are not widely known, though they are likely to include parties aboard his €500m yacht, and have caused disquiet locally for gondola operators who read about the potential disruption in Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

Bezos won’t appreciate the fuss. Like Zuckerberg, Musk, Cook and all the other tech firm bosses, his opinions may shift depending on who’s in charge, but his appetite for power continues unabated.

He might prefer the world didn’t ask questions and simply looked the other way.

Will he succeed, or will a free press continue to be there to ask the hard questions on your behalf?