I wish people also learned some critical reading:

Amazon spokesperson Ashely Vanicek said that "<exact quote>"

Is journalistically neutral. Amazon was asked about what we wrote. Here's what they said. You decide if you believe us, or Amazon.

I see nothing wrong with this, unless the headline of this story was "Goodreads' accelerated mission in delighting customers with the help of Amazon’s resources and technology.”

I see both peoples' points. Yes, journalism can objectively report the fact that Amazon said something. I think it is also fair to wish for informationally bankrupt statements to be called out by decent institutions. As you say, the headline suggests an opposition to Amazon's position, so maybe that's enough.

I really liked Hunter S Thompson's gonzo journalism take in that regard.

It went along the lines:

"The defence secretary said that we're fighting a righteous and humane war in Vietnam. The defense secretary is full of shit!"

Nowadays they send their spokes drones and have the spin masters cook up even more ridiculous shit.

Hunter S Thompson (RIP) must be spinning in his grave.

e: added quotes around Hunter's fictious statement

It's not "Is journalistically neutral". It's being a purveyor of propaganda. Just like when journalists quote cops using CopSpeak. It lets the interested party defined the terms of the debate. By constraining the terms, it can become literally impossible to say some things.

When journalists quote CopSpeak, and only report the cop's side of the story, that is propaganda. Unquestionably.

When the entire premise of the story is hyper-critical of Amazon, and Amazon's defense is half-hearted, vacuuous, and informationally background, you don't need advanced media literacy to think "Wow, that response from Amazon does NOT pass the bullshit sniff test, huh, I wonder what that means."

How much spoonfeeding do we expect to our readers?

This isn't "A cop said the suspect had a gun, and that's why he shot him" <and we burned zero calories to validate that point>".

This isn't "99.9% of scientists think one thing. 0.1% think the opposite. But we're not going to tell you that, we'll just interview 1 scientist from each position and let you decide."

This is a super critical piece of Amazon that achieves the mandatory standards of reaching out to Amazon for comment, and the comment they got speaks for itself in contrast to the story so clearly that to editorialize on it any further insults the reader's intelligence.

Cops don't say "A cop said the suspect had a gun, and that's why he shot him", they say things like "officer-involved shooting" and "The teen was also a part of the incident and was hit in the abdomen by the one shot fired from the deputy’s gun, he said."

The framing is what matters, and the WaPo story, the frame doesn't question whether or not Amazon's purchase was anti-competitive, just whether or not Amazon did a good job running it

> Cops don't say "A cop said the suspect had a gun, and that's why he shot him",

No, they say “I saw that he had a weapon”, even if the reality is that some other cop said it.

> they say things like "officer-involved shooting"

That's not what the involved cops say, that’s what the department’s public affairs office says as a lead paragraph summary to discourage engagement with the details. (The details will then be whatever story the cops involved say.)

Not giving substantive comments makes it sound more honorable than what was actually said. I actually prefer them exposing the nonsense that corporations spew, so that their disingenuity is in plain sight and on the record.

Devil's advocate: What if they gave a comment the publication didn't like (but readers would) and hid it?

Publishing what was said is more "just the facts, please" than editorializing the response, as shitty PR-speak as it is.

Don't forget the Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. If they didn't give Amazon's side unquestioned, someone would be in trouble.

The article’s entire theme is “was this purchase a good thing” and the subhead (“raises questions about [Goodreads’] longtime owner”) strongly implies the answer is no.

I get why “well, journalists never critically report on the people who directly or indirectly sign their paycheck, dontcha know!” is such a popular take (particularly in cynical times with a skeptical crowd), but the history of news shows journalists reporting on things that could potentially piss off their owners pretty repeatedly, and the Washington Post reporting on things relating to Amazon doesn’t seem to be a serious exception.

Amusingly, I just did a DuckDuckGo search on “washington post reporting on amazon”, intending to see if there were critical takes on said reporting, and what came up instead was: a plethora of WaPo articles with headlines like “Bernie Sanders launches investigation into Amazon labor practices”, “Lawmakers: Amazon may have lied to Congress”, “Perspective: How Amazon shopping ads are disguised as real results”, “FTC sues Amazon over Prime enrollment without consent”, “Amazon’s OSHA data shows its workers injured at higher rates than rival companies”, and “Tour Amazon’s dream home, where every appliance is also a spy”.