Re: the Jeff Bezos, National Enquirer story and then totally unrelated Re: Alex Jones/Infowars website/“talk show”.
I think, if I were Mr. Bezos, with the wealth he has, I would just buy up the parent company, if they were publicly listed on a stock exchange, and then shut them down.
For the National Enquirer, it seems they are owned by a larger firm (Which also owns several other mags), so the price tag would be more substantial than if it were just one stupid fake news rag. Also, and this is the easy part, you don’t want to pay more than its worth due to them knowing how wealthy you are, but (and, there is some precedent for this), you buy them out via a shell company where it would be hard to link you to the purchase. One (of many) precedent is Walt Disney buying up land surrounding Orlando in the 1960’s – he did this secretly in order to get the land cheaply, for WD World.
For Alex Jones/InfoWars, according to Wikipedia, it seems Mr Jones owns it outright, so it’s a private concern as opposed to a public shareholding company. But, again, you could just get your lawyers to represent you, without revealing who you actually are – in order to not to have to pay an exorbitant amount due to your wealthiness.
if I had the kind of money that Mr. Bezos has, I would be more than willing to take one percent of my wealth, to do this.
On the other hand, as soon as these two (people/company) are bought/removed, others will just pop up in their place. So, it would probably be a never ending battle to rid ourselves of “fake news” websites/publishing concerns, etc.
Your thoughts?
