Newspaper Publishers’ Plea For Special Antitrust Treatment Fails Laugh Test

It's the sort of brazen move that might ordinarily trigger a front-page news story or an outraged editorial — a bunch of very rich individuals asking Congress to write them a law that would give them better negotiating power against other rich individuals.

Yet in this case, the rich individuals wanting special treatment are the newspaper owners themselves. Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos (worth $83.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire's Index), New York Times owner Carlos Slim (worth $61.1 billion), and Buffalo News owner Warren Buffett (worth $76.9 billion), publicly pleading poverty, are asking Congress for a helping hand in their negotiations with Google, controlled by Sergey Brin ($45.6 billion) and Larry Page ($46.8 billion).