It has been a turbulent 24 hours for retail giant Amazon. First, the company\u2019s founder (and world\u2019s richest <\/a>individual) Jeff Bezos announced that he would step down as CEO. Then, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ruled<\/a> that the company had illegally stolen more than $61 million worth of customer tips meant for its delivery drivers.<\/p>\n 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. \u201cIn total, Amazon stole nearly one-third of drivers\u2019 tips to pad its own bottom line,\u201d said<\/a> FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra.<\/p>\n Unlike corporate crime cases in other nations<\/a>, 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n The word \u201csteal\u201d was noticeably absent from much of the reporting, despite the fact that the original Reuters<\/em><\/a> report used the word in its title \u2014 a direct reflection of the FTC\u2019s ruling. Many newspapers instead decided to go with \u201cwithhold\u201d instead:<\/p>\n \u201cAmazon to Pay Fine for Withholding Tips From Delivery Drivers\u201d (New York Times<\/em><\/a>),<\/p>\n \u201cAmazon will pay $61.7 million to delivery drivers after withholding tips\u201d (Los Angeles Times<\/em><\/a>),<\/p>\n \u201cAmazon agrees to multi-million settlement for withholding driver tips,\u201d (Pittsburgh Post Gazette<\/em><\/a>),<\/p>\n Amazon ordered to pay $61.7m fine for withholding drivers\u2019 tips,\u201d (The Independent<\/em><\/a>),<\/p>\n \u201cAmazon to pay $61.7M settlement after FTC says it withheld some tips,\u201d (Washington Examiner<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n Other outlets went with words like \u201cpocketing\u201d (Financial Times<\/a>, BBC<\/a><\/em>), \u201ckeeping\u201d (CBS News<\/em><\/a>), \u201cshorting\u201d (Courthouse News<\/em><\/a>), or \u201cshortchanging\u201d (Washington Post<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n Even worse, many more framed the news as a mere allegation<\/em>, despite the fact that the FTC had made a formal ruling. Forbes<\/em><\/a>, for instance, led with the headline \u201cAmazon Will Pay $61.7 Million Settlement After Allegedly Withholding Tips From Delivery Drivers.\u201d Others (Daily Caller<\/a>, Daily Mail<\/a><\/em>) did the same. Meanwhile, in a tweet on the news, Vox<\/em><\/a> claimed that (emphasis added) \u201cAmazon will pay $61.7 million in a settlement over allegations<\/strong> that the company used customer tips to subsidize<\/strong> the hourly wages of some<\/strong> delivery drivers.\u201d Thus, the fact that Amazon had been caught stealing was watered down into a claim that it was merely \u201csubsidizing\u201d \u201csome\u201d of its employees\u2019 wages.<\/p>\n Perhaps the worst offender was business and tech news site ZDNet<\/em><\/a>, whose headline was \u201cAmazon will pay $61.7 million to settle Flex driver tip dispute with FTC,\u201d which obscured the matter into a foggy and very technical sounding financial dispute. Only a very small number of outlets, including Slate<\/em><\/a> and The Huffington Post<\/em><\/a>, echoed the FTC\u2019s decision by using the word \u201cstole\u201d in their headlines.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> on the same healthcare issue, CNN<\/em> framed it as \u201cBiden signs executive orders expanding healthcare access,\u201d while Fox News<\/em> presented went with \u201cBiden signs order on far-left health priorities.\u201d The first primes readers to see the move as improving inclusivity while the latter fits into a \u201cradical socialist takeover of government\u201d narrative.<\/p>\n Perhaps more importantly, in this 280-character media landscape, the majority<\/a> 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<\/em><\/a> with the title \u201cStudy: 70% of Facebook users only read the headline of science stories before commenting\u201d features one paragraph of information before descending into \u201clorem ipsum\u201d 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).<\/p>\n 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<\/a> 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 \u201ctough on crime\u201d 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.<\/p>\n Alan MacLeod<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>is Senior Staff Writer for\u00a0MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books:\u00a0Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent<\/a>,\u00a0as well as\u00a0a<\/a>\u00a0number<\/a>\u00a0of<\/a>\u00a0academic<\/a>\u00a0articles<\/a>.\u00a0He has also contributed to\u00a0FAIR.org<\/a>,\u00a0The Guardian<\/a>,\u00a0Salon<\/a>,\u00a0The Grayzone<\/a>,\u00a0Jacobin Magazine<\/a>,\u00a0and\u00a0Common Dreams<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nCovering for corporate crimes<\/h2>\n
Reading past the headlines<\/h2>\n