Welcome to the beat. I'm Ari Melbert. We are living in a time of the greatest wealth gap in history.

Billionaires who are richer than anyone has ever been, literally wielding powers on par with countries.

Sometimes that power has big impacts that people cheer. They're billionaires who've made some of the

largest charitable donations in world history to help the poor fund health care.

Others have bought entire institutions.

When Jeff Bezos first bought the Washington Post over a decade ago,

there were many people in journalism and in sort of the nonpartisan fact community

that said that was a good thing.

And the Post leaned in, touting its role as a newspaper holding the Trump administration accountable, even buying, do you remember

this, a pricey Super Bowl ad in 2018. Now, you might be thinking newspapers are usually pleading for

donations or offering you a mug or a tote bag to buy to subsidize them. And by the way, I encourage you

to consider doing that if you like your local paper, but they don't usually buy the most expensive ad space of the year. But again, they had that billionaire

owner. And here was that ads mantra.

Because knowing empowers us.

Knowing helps us decide.

Knowing keeps us decide. Knowing keeps us free.

Democracy dies in darkness.

And Bezos, in that era, spoke out

against exactly how Trump was demonizing the free press.

It's really dangerous to demonize the media.

It's dangerous to call the media lowlifes.

It's dangerous to say that they're the enemy of the people.

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