Media Runs Defense for Amazon After Retail Giant Caught Stealing Millions
From Workers
Amazon just got caught stealing millions from its workers, but instead of
grilling the retail giant, the media appear to be working hard to run
defense for it.
by Alan Macleod
February 03rd, 2021
Mint Press
By Alan Macleod
It has been a turbulent 24 hours for retail giant Amazon. First, the
company's founder (and world's richest individual) Jeff Bezos announced that
he would step down as CEO. Then, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ruled
that the company had illegally stolen more than $61 million worth of
customer tips meant for its delivery drivers.
Under their contracts, Amazon drivers were supposed to make between $18 and
$25 per hour and keep all their tips. However, since at least 2016, the
company had been secretly confiscating tips customers sent through an app,
using their contributions to reduce their own wage payouts, meaning they
were swindling both customers and employees. "In total, Amazon stole nearly
one-third of drivers' tips to pad its own bottom line," said FTC
Commissioner Rohit Chopra.
Unlike corporate crime cases in other nations, Amazon will merely be
required to pay back the money it took from employees. Thus, it will face no
negative consequences, except a possible public relations backlash due to
bad press. Yet, instead of grilling Amazon, the media appear to be working
hard to run defense for it, downplaying the nature of the crime in their
headlines.
Covering for corporate crimes
The word "steal" was noticeably absent from much of the reporting, despite
the fact that the original Reuters report used the word in its title - a
direct reflection of the FTC's ruling. Many newspapers instead decided to go
with "withhold" instead:
"Amazon to Pay Fine for Withholding Tips From Delivery Drivers" (New York
Times),
"Amazon will pay $61.7 million to delivery drivers after withholding tips"
(Los Angeles Times),
"Amazon agrees to multi-million settlement for withholding driver tips,"
(Pittsburgh Post Gazette),
Forebes Media Bias
Despite an FTC ruling, Forbes's headline called the theft an "allegation"
"Amazon ordered to pay $61.7m fine for withholding drivers' tips," (The
Independent),
"Amazon to pay $61.7M settlement after FTC says it withheld some tips,"
(Washington Examiner).
Other outlets went with words like "pocketing" (Financial Times, BBC),
"keeping" (CBS News), "shorting" (Courthouse News), or "shortchanging"
(Washington Post).
Even worse, many more framed the news as a mere allegation, despite the fact
that the FTC had made a formal ruling. Forbes, for instance, led with the
headline "Amazon Will Pay $61.7 Million Settlement After Allegedly
Withholding Tips From Delivery Drivers." Others (Daily Caller, Daily Mail)
did the same. Meanwhile, in a tweet on the news, Vox claimed that (emphasis
added) "Amazon will pay $61.7 million in a settlement over allegations that
the company used customer tips to subsidize the hourly wages of some
delivery drivers." Thus, the fact that Amazon had been caught stealing was
watered down into a claim that it was merely "subsidizing" "some" of its
employees' wages.
Perhaps the worst offender was business and tech news site ZDNet, whose
headline was "Amazon will pay $61.7 million to settle Flex driver tip
dispute with FTC," which obscured the matter into a foggy and very technical
sounding financial dispute. Only a very small number of outlets, including
Slate and The Huffington Post, echoed the FTC's decision by using the word
"stole" in their headlines.
Reading past the headlines
Framing is an important concept in media, as the words chosen encourage
readers to interpret news in a certain manner. For instance, this week,
reporting on the same healthcare issue, CNN framed it as "Biden signs
executive orders expanding healthcare access," while Fox News presented went
with "Biden signs order on far-left health priorities." The first primes
readers to see the move as improving inclusivity while the latter fits into
a "radical socialist takeover of government" narrative.
Perhaps more importantly, in this 280-character media landscape, the
majority of people do not read past the headline, even before sharing
content, making accurate titles particularly important in conveying
information on news and current events. Indeed, one article in Science Post
with the title "Study: 70% of Facebook users only read the headline of
science stories before commenting" features one paragraph of information
before descending into "lorem ipsum" gibberish text has been shared 193,000
times, mostly on Facebook itself (although it is not clear how many people
are sharing it as a joke).
Thus, the effect of the inaccurate titles has been to bury a story about
massive wage theft. Wage theft is a massive problem in the United States. A
2017 study from the Economic Policy Institute across ten U.S. states found
that 2.4 million minimum wage workers were being defrauded out of an average
of $64 per week, equating to $8 billion annual losses. For many, their
employer is far more likely to steal from them than a masked robber. Yet
this is rarely the sort of violation that "tough on crime" politicians have
in mind when they deploy that rhetoric. And when the public thinks of crime,
wage theft is rarely high on the list, thanks, in no small part, to how the
media downplays corporate crime where the rich steal from the poor.
