Decryption | The new kings of media

(New York) For a few days in September, Larry Ellison took the title of richest man on the planet from Elon Musk.

Having since fallen to second place in this ranking, the big boss of Oracle, worth more than 350 billion US dollars, could soon share with his son David a new title: king of the media.

Aged 81, Larry Ellison built his fortune by conquering an unsexy but nevertheless crucial sector of digital technology: enterprise IT and databases. However, if everything goes as he wishes – and his privileged ties with Donald Trump work in his favor – he and his offspring will soon own a media empire including CBS, CNN and TikTok, among others.

“It really would be the most powerful media organization ever assembled, at least in this century, if not perhaps in all of American history,” says Michael Socolow, a media historian at the University of Maine.

Never has a media empire emerged more quickly. Enough to make the Murdochs jealous, whose own media empire will be eclipsed overnight.

What also raises questions about the independence of the Ellisons vis-à-vis the Trump administration.

But first, the facts.

With the indispensable help of his father, David Ellison, 42, became the big boss of CBS at the end of June. How ? Thanks to the purchase of Paramount Global for 8 billion US dollars by Skydance Media, the production company he created in 2006 and to which we owe Top Gun: Maverick and two films from the Mission: Impossible series, among others.

Two controversial decisions by Paramount preceded this merger requiring authorization from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), headed by Donald Trump ally Brendan Carr. Initially, this conglomerate agreed to pay US 16 million to the president to settle his bogus lawsuit against 60 MinutesCBS’ flagship news show.

Secondly, Paramount, through CBS, announced the upcoming end of the late-night show hosted by Stephen Colbert, a great critic of Donald Trump.

TikTok, jewel of the empire

Skydance also gave pledges to the FCC before its merger with Paramount. David Ellison’s company notably committed in writing that its programming would reflect “the diversity of points of view from across the political and ideological spectrum” and to “adopt measures to eliminate biases that have undermined trust in the national news media,” according to the FCC letter announcing its decision to authorize the merger.

This commitment resulted, in early September, in the hiring of Kenneth Weinstein, former president of a conservative think tank, as ombudsman for CBS News. It continued last week with the appointment of Bari Weiss, an anti-woke journalist who became an apologist for Trumpism¹as editor-in-chief of CBS News.

This appointment was added to the acquisition by Paramount of a media founded by Bari Weiss – the Free Press – for 150 million US.

That said, TikTok, one of the most addictive and influential apps in the world, is destined to become the crown jewel of the Ellisons’ media empire. At the end of September, Donald Trump signed a decree paving the way for an agreement aimed at transferring the majority of shares in the American subsidiary of the Chinese social network to some of its richest supporters.

Larry Ellison is the most important of them. Once the agreement is finalized, it will also be responsible for managing, through Oracle, the TikTok algorithm in the United States, where the number of users of the application has crossed the 180 million mark.

This is not the only case where Larry Ellison is indebted to Donald Trump. The latter also invited him to participate in Stargate, its US$500 billion project intended to build giant data centers for the future generation of artificial intelligence.

Should we fear that these close, even incestuous, relationships will lead Oracle to manipulate TikTok’s algorithm to favor Donald Trump and the MAGA movement?

“100% MAGA”?

The question was asked of Donald Trump the day he signed his presidential executive order on TikTok. The president responded in a playful tone.

But not everyone is laughing. Especially since the Ellisons’ appetite is not satisfied. They now covet Warner Brothers Discovery. According to Bloomberg, a first purchase offer was refused by the company whose properties include CNN and HBO, but everything suggests that the Ellisons will return to the charge.

“The Ellison duo taking control of both CBS and CNN, as well as a major social network like TikTok, would be dangerous for democracy,” the media watchdog group FAIR recently warned. “And given their proximity to the Trump regime, that seems to be the goal.” »

David Ellison swears this is not the case. Unlike his father, he does not belong to the MAGA movement. In fact, he contributed $1 million to a pro-Joe Biden political action committee in 2020.

According to Michael Socolow, it is still far too early to judge how the Ellison media empire will be managed.

“What they are creating is the possibility of establishing an editorial line through their media that would be extremely powerful,” explains the media historian at the University of Maine. “But we don’t know if they’re going to act like the Murdochs, who deal separately with the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, for example, or whether they will act like the Hearst organization, which has maintained a unique editorial line. »

History does not repeat itself, it stutters, a certain Marx was made to say. In the 1920s and 1930s, Randolph Hearst’s newspapers published op-eds by Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler. Their motto: “America first”.

1. Read conservative/libertarian journalist Cathy Young’s critique of Bari Weiss’s work running the Free Press