The TV Segment That Lays Bare Everything That's Wrong with Corporate Media Today

Softballs for Amazon's PR rep, superficial questions, and a former WH press secretary: this segment has it all.

The New York Times published a somewhat scathing survey of Amazon's corporate culture Sunday that quickly went viral -- becoming the Times' most shared story over the past 36 hours. The piece, written by Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld, dug deep into Amazon's hyper-competitive culture and highlighted its more abusive and dehumanizing extremes. Some of the worst offenses being a lack of paternity leave, people sobbing at their desk, a "snitch" app that lets employees anonymously tattle on their colleagues, and a culture that one former HR director called “purposeful Darwinism.”

But worry not, CBS News is here to the rescue. After reading a press release by Amazon, the three CBS This Morning hosts had on New York Times journalist Jodi Kantor to defend her article. Ms. Kantor, for her part, would go out of her way to show that the piece also gave the company praise and that many people she interviewed seemed to genuinely enjoy the cut-throat environment and that her primary line of critique was the decidedly lukewarm idea that Amazon was fundamentally great but had simply "gone a bit too far". Never mind, our CBS hosts wanted to get to the bottom of it.

"This is a tough article on Amazon", Charlie Rose insisted with great concern. "In part, how did it come about?"

After giving a detailed back story and what motivated her to write the piece, Rose's co-host Gayle King asked again, unsatisfied.

"So, how did this story come about?", She prodded. Clearly, there had to have been some other force at work here. The interview went on for another three minutes before the hosts handed the floor over to Amazon PR flack and former White House press secretary Jay Carney. The questions for him, far less skeptical -- at one point letting him talk uninterrupted for a whole minute-and-a-half.

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