12. i know it s not perfect. right. but that s where i disagree with your colleague gene robinson today in the paper where he was saying there is something wrong with drones. yeah. but if the alternative is going to war with yet another islamic country, i ll go to war with drones. exactly. some republicans want the president, any president frankly but this president in particular to just go headlong into any conflict that happens around the world and it seems all the conflicts happening have been in the middle east when the arab spring rose up in egypt, send troops to egypt. when it happened in libya, send troops to libya. the united states send troops to syria. that was the other one. send troops to syria. one minute they re complaining we don t have enough money we re going broke, we can t do all these things the president wants to do. the moment there s an international conflict, they want is the united states to go there. if anything, this president obama s foreign pol
welcome back to hardball. a foreboding front page of the washington post today. graham s to sell the washington post. there it is. it hit our driveway this morning. the graham family owned the post for generations and fought to the hill to defend its independence through the watergate investigation when reporters bob woodward and carl bernstein took down nixon s administration. the grahams had the guts to stand up for their paper and defend that special brand of investigative journalism, which can make you a lot of enemies. but now the washington post has a new owner, silicon valley billionaire and amazon.com founder jeff bezos. bezos isn t alone. over the last several years, billionaires have been gobbling up newspapers across the country, from the wall street journal to the boston globe. in some cases, like rupert murdoch s purchase of the
with your colleague gene robinson today in the paper where he was saying there is something wrong with drones. yeah. but if the alternative is going to war with yet another islamic country, i ll go to war with drones. exactly. some republicans want the president, any president frankly but this president in particular to just go headlong into any conflict that happens around the world and it seems all the conflicts happening have been in the middle east when the arab spring rose up in egypt, send troops to egypt. when it happened in libya, send troops to libya. the united states send troops to syria. that was the other one. send troops to syria. one minute they re complaining we don t have enough money we re going broke, we can t do all these things the president wants to do. the moment there s an international conflict, they want is the united states to go there. if anything, this president obama s foreign policy is cautious. and it s a little too cautious for a whole lot of pe
newspapers as well. the question is a pressing one. will the new money have the same guts and drive as the old money or will the papers they buy become political mouthpieces in some cases to the far right. anyway, eugene robinson is an smog alert expert, an msnbc political analyst. and brad stone is a columnist with business week and the author of the upcoming book the everything store: jeff bezos and the age of amazon. right to you, brad. will bezos maintain the independent of the newspaper and be like the old money, grahams and willing to say i m willing to bleed economically so this paper will live? absolutely. i don t see him as having an overt political agenda. i think his idealism will be a business idealism about disrupting the newspaper s old revenue models, building new ones. experimenting digitally. you know, does he have an agenda? i think it s no accident that he s buying the washington post at a time when amazon increasingly has regulatory and legislative issues.
let me finish tonight with this. you know, we never value something as much as when it is taken away from us. like so many of you, i m a newspaper reader. i love the papers. when i m in another country, i love getting the usa today or both. i love reading:00 america from europe. and every day you see me here at this desk. i ve spent a good part of the morning loving the new york times and the washington post and politico, the political trade paper. and sometimes the wall street journal as well. i love the feel of the broad sheet, the excitement of a tab, the turning of the pages, the checking of the sports section, and the scores. the celebrity news, just enough that is, and the opinions on the op-ed page. i want to know what people like me and also not like me are thinking. newspapers are great for one great reason. they throw it at you. you don t go looking for a piece on pakistan, but there it is, staring at you when you go to