In a story posted on Medium today (February 7, 2019), Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos claims that Bike Magazine’s new parent company American Media (through its tabloid The National Enquirer) has threatened to publish photos of Mr. Bezos’ penis “as well as nine other images” if Mr. Bezos didn’t call the Washington Post off its investigation of American Media CEO David Pecker’s relationship with Donald Trump, according to a story on the Huffington Post.
Here’s a little of what Mr. Bezos is claiming:
I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse. Or at least that’s what the top people at the National Enquirer thought. I’m glad they thought that, because it emboldened them to put it all in writing. Rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, I’ve decided to publish exactly what they sent me, despite the personal cost and embarrassment they threaten. . . They said they had more of my text messages and photos that they would publish if we didn’t stop our investigation.
Usually these stories that have nothing to do with cycling would be well outside our “lane.” But last week’s sale brings it all home to our world. Think about it? This suggests that those left at what once was TEN are now in a not-so-roundabout way working for the Trump Administration. We would imagine this might get some bicycle industry marketing asking themselves, “Do we really want to support Donald Trump by spending advertising and marketing dollars with American Media right now?”
We can say this for certain: if this is how American Media does business, then the people who had their jobs eliminated last week are the lucky ones.
[Link: The Huffington Post]
