Trump supporter and CIA affiliate Larry Ellison’s acquisition of CNN seems imminent, representing his latest foray into the media sector as the world’s second wealthiest person. But Ellison is far from alone in this. In fact, the globe’s seven richest men have all become influential media magnates, wielding control over the information consumed globally. This trend signals a troubling new era of oligarchic dominance over society, jeopardizing independent journalism and the plurality of viewpoints.
Media Monopoly
Ellison’s company, Paramount Skydance, is leading the bid to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery – a vast media conglomerate owning major film and TV studios, streaming platforms such as HBO Max and Discovery+, franchises like DC Comics, and networks including HBO, TNT, Discovery Channel, TLC, Food Network, and CNN. Ellison’s close ties to President Trump are a key factor, given Trump’s final approval role in the deal.
Ellison has already conferred with top White House officials about removing CNN hosts and programs disliked by Trump, such as anchors Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar. His readiness to radically shift the network’s political direction has made him the favored candidate for Warner Brothers Discovery’s purchase. His vast personal wealth reportedly enables a cash payment.
With a net worth of approximately $278 billion, Ellison has been aggressively investing in media this year. Earlier, he financed Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount Global, a media giant owning properties like CBS, BET, MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, Paramount Streaming, and Showtime.
Shortly after becoming CBS News CEO, Ellison’s son David dramatically reoriented the network’s politics, dismissing staff, steering its narrative pro-Trump, and installing self-described “Zionist fanatic” Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief.
The Ellisons are far from done. In September, Trump approved an executive order compelling the sale of TikTok to a U.S. consortium led by Ellison’s tech firm, Oracle.
This deal would place Oracle in charge of TikTok’s security and daily operations, giving Ellison effective control of a platform relied upon by over 60% of Americans under 30 for news and entertainment according to research. Trump expressed enthusiasm about Oracle’s overseeing the app, stating, “It’s owned by Americans, and very sophisticated Americans,” he said.
This swift expansion into media by the Ellison family has alarmed many prominent journalists. Veteran CBS anchor Dan Rather warned that the growing billionaire consolidation of major news outlets threatens press freedom. He noted the challenging atmosphere at CBS News, pressured to adopt a pro-Trump stance, adding that an Ellison acquisition of CNN “would change CNN forever” and further injure CBS News.
Billionaire Capture
Rather’s concerns are valid. The rapid accumulation of communication platforms and news outlets by ultra-wealthy individuals raises serious issues regarding free speech and viewpoint diversity. Presently, all seven of the richest men worldwide dominate major media, granting them tremendous authority over public discourse, enabling agenda-setting and censorship of criticism—whether of themselves, economic structures, or U.S. and Israeli government actions.
Holding a fortune exceeding $480 billion, Elon Musk is the richest person in history and is expected to become the world’s first trillionaire within ten years. In 2022, he acquired Twitter for about $44 billion and promptly used it to amplify his far-right political views. For example, in 2024, he played a major role in supporting an attempt to unseat Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, spreading misinformation, and even threatening Maduro with Guantánamo Bay imprisonment.
Musk has also publicly altered his AI chatbot Grok multiple times to produce more conservative replies, which led to Grok praising Adolf Hitler at one point.
Last year, Musk surpassed Jeff Bezos as the richest individual. Bezos, like Musk, has ventured deeply into media ownership. In 2013, Bezos purchased The Washington Post for $250 million and swiftly began shaping its content by dismissing anti-establishment voices and promoting pro-war commentators. This followed his acquiring a minority stake in Business Insider (now Insider) that same year.
In 2014, Amazon paid nearly $1 billion for Twitch, a livestreaming service boasting about 7 million monthly broadcasters according to data. Amazon’s media portfolio also includes MGM studios, audiobook platform Audible, and film database IMDB.
French magnate Bernard Arnault, the seventh richest man and chairman of luxury titan Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH), has been acquiring many of France’s media outlets. His holdings encompass newspapers like Le Parisien and Les Echos, magazines such as Paris Match and Challenges, plus Radio Classique.
The other three billionaires completing the top seven owe much of their wealth to media empires. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, co-founders of Google, have combined net worth exceeding half a trillion dollars. Google dominates tech markets and owns YouTube, acquired in 2006 for $1.65 billion. Thirty-five percent of Americans use YouTube as a primary news source.
Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune of $203 billion stems from his social media and tech enterprises like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. These platforms remain vital news sources for 38%, 20%, and 5% of Americans, respectively according to research.
MAGA Mouthpieces
Many of these billionaires have aligned themselves with President Trump to advance Republican policies and conservative ideologies. The Ellison family notably proclaimed major edits at CBS News aimed at delivering “unbiased” and more “varied ideological perspectives,” broadly understood as a tilt towards right-wing, pro-Trump coverage.
Larry Ellison’s strong conservative beliefs have made him a leading GOP donor and close Trump ally. A Trump insider even labeled him the “shadow President of the United States” according to reports.
Musk, meanwhile, has openly transformed Twitter into a platform dominated by conservatives and served unofficially in Trump’s cabinet as the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Zuckerberg has taken several steps to align his platforms with the MAGA base, including firing the fact-checking team labeled as liberal, embracing “free speech” as he defines it, and relocating content moderation teams from California to Texas, “where there is less concern about the bias of our teams,” he said.
Zuckerberg replaced Meta’s global affairs president Nick Clegg, a former UK Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister, with prominent Republican Joel Kaplan, George W. Bush’s ex-chief of staff. He also added Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s CEO and a close Trump supporter, to Meta’s board despite White’s lack of media experience.
These shifts seemingly responded to Trump’s threat to jail Zuckerberg “for the rest of his life” should he attempt to “cheat” him in the 2024 election. Zuckerberg later met Trump at Mar-a-Lago and, alongside Bezos and other tech leaders, donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Bezos mirrored this approach at The Washington Post by declaring it would stop publishing critical views on capitalism. “We will write daily in support of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” he wrote, suggesting dissenters could find alternatives “on the internet.”
This provoked strong backlash from Post staff, with lead economics writer Jeff Stein lamenting Bezos’ “massive encroachment” and warning that dissenting opinions would no longer be permitted.
Bezos’s stance has notably reversed his past view of Trump as a “threat to democracy.” By January 2025, he was seated alongside Zuckerberg, Musk, and Arnault behind Trump at his inauguration.
Despite his French roots, Arnault maintains a surprisingly close bond with Trump. In 2019, the billionaire inaugurated a Louis Vuitton factory in Alvarado, Texas, a move some have interpreted as courting the U.S. president. Trump attended the opening, praising Arnault as an “artist” and “visionary.”
Owing to ties with the Trump family, the Arnaults have become informal liaisons between the U.S. and French governments. They were hosted by the Trumps at Mar-a-Lago in 2023, and Bernard even visited the White House amid a trade conflict earlier this year to ease tensions.
Pentagon Contractors
A crucial factor underpinning many of the world’s seven richest men’s fortunes is their close connection to the U.S. national security apparatus, with several benefiting from lucrative Pentagon contracts. Modern warfare depends heavily on advanced computing as much as traditional weaponry, and in 2022, the Department of Defense awarded a $9 billion cloud computing contract to Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle according to reports.
Amazon under Bezos has long cultivated close ties to the CIA, signing a $600 million deal with the agency in 2014. Google and Musk’s SpaceX have also been linked to the intelligence community since their beginnings.
The CIA funded Sergey Brin’s PhD work at Stanford, research foundational to Google’s creation. An investigation revealed senior intelligence officials, including from the CIA, actively supervised Google’s development prior to its formal launch.
In 2005, the CIA’s venture capital entity In-Q-Tel was a significant Google shareholder. This resulted from Google acquiring Keyhole, Inc., a CIA-backed surveillance firm whose software evolved into Google Earth. By 2007, enhanced Google Earth technology was reportedly being used to monitor and target enemies in Iraq and elsewhere according to The Washington Post. Google was also collaborating with Lockheed Martin on military tech. Additionally, there is extensive movement between Google and federal government roles.
Elon Musk’s success is also deeply intertwined with the CIA. In-Q-Tel’s head Mike Griffin helped establish SpaceX by offering critical early assistance and even accompanied Musk to Russia in 2002 seeking to purchase decommissioned intercontinental ballistic missiles. Griffin persistently lauded Musk in CIA circles, dubbing him the “Henry Ford” of space travel deserving full government backing.
Despite early financial struggles and near collapse in 2008, SpaceX was rescued by a $1.6 billion NASA contract Griffin facilitated. Today, SpaceX excels as a major contractor for agencies like the Air Force, Space Development Agency, and National Reconnaissance Office. Recently, the Pentagon recruited Musk to develop a defense against nuclear threats through Castelion, a SpaceX spinoff creating armed satellites over North America designed to intercept incoming nuclear missiles. Success would grant the U.S. an unparalleled strategic advantage, ending mutually assured destruction and ushering in a perilous new global dynamic.
Most of Castelion’s leadership and senior advisers are former SpaceX staff, with two advisors, including Griffin, ex-CIA officials. Musk named his eldest son Griffin Musk, while another of his children, X Æ A-12, carries the name of a CIA spy plane as noted.
The closest CIA ties belong to Larry Ellison, who began working with the agency on a database system called Project Oracle. He co-founded Oracle in 1977, named after the project, with the CIA as its sole early client. Ellison later secured contracts with Navy Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, and the NSA according to sources.
That collaboration continues: in 2020, Oracle landed a $15 billion, 15-year contract with the CIA and 16 other U.S. intelligence bodies. The company’s leadership features numerous former CIA officials like Leon Panetta, ex-CIA Director and Secretary of Defense, who serves on Oracle’s board.
Arming and Supporting Israel
A shared characteristic of many of these ultra-wealthy individuals is their fervent support for Israel and its expansionist agenda.
Ellison exemplifies this, dedicating much effort to promoting the Jewish State’s causes worldwide. A staunch backer of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Ellison vacationed with him on his private Hawaiian island and offered Netanyahu a role on Oracle’s board, complete with a $450,000 annual salary.
As the top donor to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), Ellison pledged $16.6 million in 2017 alone for a new training center, praising IDF soldiers as defenders of “our home.” At a fundraiser, he said:
“Through all of the perilous times since Israel’s founding, we have called on the brave men and women of the IDF to defend our home. In my mind, there is no greater honor than supporting some of the bravest people in the world, and I thank Friends of the IDF for allowing us to celebrate and support these soldiers year after year. We should do all we can to show these heroic soldiers that they are not alone.”
David Ellison shares this Zionist zeal, reportedly meeting a top Israeli general to assist in spying on American citizens involved in pro-Palestine activism during Israel’s Gaza offensive, revealed by an investigation from The Grayzone. Sergey Brin is also named as a potential collaborator.
Oracle’s Israeli CEO, Safra Catz, a close Netanyahu ally, describes the company as on a “mission” to support Israel, enforcing stringent pro-Israel policies internally. After the October 2023 violence, Catz mandated that every global company screen display “Oracle stands with Israel” in over 180 countries according to reports.
Employee pushback has been met with firmness. Catz responded bluntly: “We are not flexible regarding our mission, and our commitment to Israel is second to none,” she said, adding:
“This is a free world and I love my employees, and if they don’t agree with our mission to support the State of Israel, then maybe we aren’t the right company for them. Larry and I are publicly committed to Israel and devote personal time to the country, and no one should be surprised by that.”
Reports, even within mainstream business outlets, indicate the Ellison family’s media acquisitions were motivated by a wish to improve Israel’s unfavorable public image, a battle Tel Aviv is losing. Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League, commented that: “We really have a TikTok problem, a Gen Z problem,” citing the widespread exposure of Israeli military actions to young audiences worldwide as a PR crisis.
Former Congressman Mike Gallagher, a leading figure behind TikTok ban efforts, explained that while his bill initially failed, outrage following October 7, 2023, revived support on Capitol Hill, ultimately passing into law and necessitating TikTok’s sale to Oracle-led interests.
This pro-Israel pivot is evident at CBS News with Bari Weiss’s hiring as editor-in-chief. Weiss first gained notice in college for establishing an organization that sought to dismiss Muslim and Arab professors for pro-Palestine beliefs. As The Financial Times observed, Weiss’s appointment partly reflects her pro-Israel stance. Recently, at the Jewish Leadership Conference, she declared she aims to “redraw the lines of what falls in the 40 yards of acceptable debate” in the U.S., marginalizing figures like Hassan Piker and Tucker Carlson and elevating “charismatic” people such as Alan Dershowitz, whom she claims represent “the vast majority of Americans.”
Zuckerberg’s platforms—Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—show a similarly strong pro-Israel bias. As early as 2016, Facebook collaborated with Israel’s government on censorship, with Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked disclosing that Facebook removed 95% of her requests to take down pro-Palestine content.
The Facebook-Israel alliance deepened in 2020 when Facebook appointed Emi Palmor, former Director General of Israel’s Ministry of Justice and ex-spy with IDF intelligence Unit 8200, to its oversight board, a committee overseeing the platform’s political direction.
Zuckerberg’s platforms have frequently blocked Palestinian voices citing dubious “hate speech” claims. After the October 7 attacks, Human Rights Watch released a report highlighting “systemic censorship of Palestinian content” on Instagram and Facebook. Out of 1,050 reviewed cases, 1,049 were peaceful expressions supporting Palestine and did not violate Meta’s policies.
In 2023, Instagram automatically added the term “terrorist” to thousands of Palestinian user bios, which Meta later claimed was a translation error.
Meta employees have voiced internal concerns about pervasive suppression and a “hostile and unsafe” environment for Palestinian and Muslim staff.
WhatsApp is also at the heart of a data controversy. The Israeli military reportedly uses Palestinians’ WhatsApp information to identify and target tens of thousands in Gaza. It remains unclear whether Meta facilitates this, though the presence of many former Israeli intelligence agents in Meta’s senior roles raises suspicion. A 2022 MintPress investigation discovered hundreds of ex-Unit 8200 operatives employed by Meta, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.
Zuckerberg is known for his staunch pro-Israel stance and close familial ties to the country. Following the October 2023 attacks, he issued a statement condemning Hamas and allied groups as “pure evil,” earning formal gratitude from the Israeli government according to media.
Musk also aligned himself with Israel, visiting in November 2023 to meet Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog, offering unwavering support for their Gaza campaign. He described Hamas as “evil” and accused it of “revel[ing] in the joy of killing civilians,” while publicly asserting the IDF strives “to avoid killing civilians.” At that time, Israeli airstrikes had killed at least 20,000 people in four weeks according to reports.
Netanyahu called Twitter one of Israel’s “most important weapons” in the conflict and defended Musk against fascism accusations after Musk performed a Nazi salute at the Conservative Political Action Conference according to commentary.
During this visit, Musk signed an agreement granting Israel control and oversight over Starlink communication hubs within Israel and Gaza as reported.
Google and Amazon have also played roles in aiding Israel’s operations. In 2021, they inked a $1.2 billion contract with Israel to provide cloud computing and AI support to the IDF, technologies deployed against Gaza’s civilian population. Employee protests, including sit-ins, have challenged this collaboration.
Numerous Google staff members maintain close links to Israel. At least 99 former Unit 8200 operatives work at the company, including Gavriel Goidel, a former unit commander who now heads Google’s strategy and operations.
Google has additionally aided the dissemination of Israeli government propaganda to tens of millions in Europe, despite violations of its own policies.
Part of this may reflect Sergey Brin’s personal stance. Usually reserved and apolitical, Brin vehemently criticized the United Nations for releasing a report implicating Google in the Gaza conflict, calling the label “genocide” “deeply offensive” to Jews who suffered real genocides.
Arnault, for his part, has stayed silent on Gaza but heavily invested in Israel. Diamonds and precious stones are vital to Israel’s economy, and LVMH’s luxury brands distribute these globally. Activists have called for boycotting Israeli diamonds as conflict minerals. Arnault has also invested in the Israeli tech-security company Wiz, acquired by Google for $32 billion. Recently, LVMH signed a $55 million deal with former IDF soldier and actress Gal Gadot to serve as a brand ambassador.
We live in an age of extreme global disparity. Together, these seven titans—Musk, Ellison, Page, Brin, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Arnault—possess more wealth than the poorest half of the planet’s population, over four billion people. With unimaginable riches, they are rapidly purchasing assets, including media outlets, at an unprecedented scale.
For billionaires, dominating the press achieves three goals: shielding themselves and their class from scrutiny, influencing public discourse to favor business interests, and using their media to advance personal causes.
All three dynamics are apparent as the media landscape shifts markedly toward conservative, pro-Trump, and pro-Israel narratives, marginalizing opposing perspectives.
This consolidation has severely harmed democracy, societal openness, and public access to diverse viewpoints. Previously, individuals seeking alternative opinions could simply turn to online sources; however, increasing censorship—especially regarding Israel/Palestine—threatens even this option.
In essence, this takeover of the media system by the super-rich demonstrates that billionaires not only hoard resources but also pose a fundamental threat to free societies and the uninhibited flow of information.
Original article: mintpressnews.com
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