No Thank You, Mr. Pecker
I believe people on this thread are viewing this thing in a specific way, and that there are other ways to consider this.<p>1) I suggest this is not blackmail in the legal sense. AMI, whatever they are - are not idiots. AMI probably knows better than any company in the world what is going to constitute &#x27;newsworthy&#x27; items, at least in the legal sense. To suggest they would do something blatantly illegal and criminal in an email of all things  ... I think does not make sense.<p>They do this sort of thing for a living.<p>2) This is a back room deal, a pretty normal one. They are asking Bezos to state:<p>&quot;have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI’s coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces.&quot;<p>This may actually technically be true. Does Bezos actually have hard evidence of political interference? And how would acquire this? And if he doesn&#x27;t, what is the cost of merely stating a fact?<p>If we move out of a moral headspace for a moment and just consider the realpolitik of the situation - it&#x27;s tantamount to a kind of &#x27;legal blackmail&#x27; - superficially, it&#x27;s not a bad deal at all.<p>This is hardball and it&#x27;s not exactly uncommon in business, it&#x27;s just of a very personal nature.<p>3) If those pics are published, the &#x27;courage&#x27; of Bezos&#x27; ostensible principled stance are not going to be rewarded.<p>The #1 thing Bezos will be known for, for at least a decade are his &#x27;dick picks&#x27; and that he was &#x27;cheating on his wife and kids&#x27;.<p>None of the context will really matter that much, i.e. maybe he was already separated, maybe the &#x27;dick picks&#x27; were totally private, nothing to do with work, the woman did not work for him etc..<p>It <i>does not matter</i>.<p>A dick pick is all anyone will know.<p>Bezos is famous among us, but he&#x27;s not really famous among regular people, but this could make could really make him a &#x27;household name&#x27; for the wrong reasons.<p>Remember: the realm of pop culture nobody cares about &#x27;principles&#x27;. Images flashing across the screen of a blurred out penis will be 99% of the news type thing.<p>This is a &#x27;pop culture&#x27; war, not a legal war, or a war among public intellectuals or businessmen. This is a &#x27;Buzzfeed war&#x27; and Bezos doesn&#x27;t have any ammunition.<p>His penis may be seen by billions, almost nobody will read his Medium post.<p>4) I respect his choice - but - he has a company to worry about. If this blows up, and it starts to affect his &#x27;perceived credibility&#x27; - what is he going to tell his board? He had a &#x27;truce agreement&#x27; on the table which seemed ostensibly reasonable (assuming Bezos doesn&#x27;t have some crazy evidence that he really needs to provide the feds?).<p>The pragmatic choice would have been to make a truce with his warring entities.<p>Thankfully, Bezos has billions and ownership etc. and doesn&#x27;t have a normal CEO-board relationship, as I believe most &#x27;regular boards&#x27; would have seen only the realpolitik of the situation and would be aghast that he didn&#x27;t make an agreement.<p>So good on him for ostensibly &#x27;doing the right thing&#x27; but I feel there is much more to come.