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Trump shouldn't criticise the news media, says Amazon's Jeff Bezos

Who happens to own The Washington Post newspaper

Jeff Bezos, owner of the US Washington Post newspaper, has opined that it is "dangerous" for America's mop-haired 45th president Donald Trump to criticise the media.

Bezos, the world's richest man and gros fromage of the sprawling Amazon online services empire, had a pop at The Donald after one of the latter's wearyingly frequent outbursts at the American journos for writing down what he says and publishing it.

What Trump "should say (of criticism) is, 'This is right, this is good. I am glad I am being scrutinized,' and that would be so secure and confident," Bezos told the president of the Economic Club of Washington DC, David Rubenstein, during an on-stage talk held at the club.

Bezos added: "But it is really dangerous to demonize the media. It is dangerous to call the media lowlifes, it is dangerous to say that they are the enemy of the people."

These terms of endearment are all things Trump has said about the news media, most of which came out via his Twitter account. The American president is not known for restraint in using the microblogging platform to broadcast every thought and idea that crosses his mind.

The pair have form, with Trump last December complaining that the US Postal Service's pricing policies were helping to make the likes to Amazon richer.

Bezos responded on the angry echo chamber also known as Twitter:

But Big Baby Donald has always liked to get the last word.

The irony here is that Amazon itself is hypersensitive to media criticism, with The Times' science correspondent Tom Whipple famously saying: "Amazon have the most unpleasant press office in journalism. I used to deal with the Tamil Tiger press office, and they kidnapped me. Amazon are worse."

Your correspondent, on writing something a little while ago calling its voice-recognition powered search thingy Alexa a creepy always-on surveillance device prompted the kind of PR response El Reg previously saw from a government department which was furious that we dared to publicly name one of its underlings.

Amazon is also planning to build a second headquarters somewhere in the US, bringing with it thousands of job opportunities. On being asked where in the US this would happen, Bezos would only say: "We will announce a decision before the end of this year." ®

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