Llewellyn King: In the collision between billionaires and news coverage, the public loses
“Big Fish Eat Little Fish,” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1556)
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
Trillions, as in trillions of dollars, are being bandied about in the way millions were, then billions. But take a look at 1 trillion expressed numerically: 1,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo. Awesome, isn’t it? Twelve zeros.
The national debt stands at $39 trillion and the interest on that will top $1 trillion this year.
Very soon the first trillionaire will thunder past the post, presumably Elon Musk.
I have nothing against Musk. And I have nothing against successful people being rewarded for their talent.
Musk has done enormous things. An immigrant from South Africa, he made his first fortune with PayPal. Since then, he has been important in solar-energy revolution, electric cars, and in leading development of a heavy-lift rocket that has made space exploration cheaper than when NASA alone was at the controls. His Boring Company still holds promise.
It is assumed, as so often, that because a person is good at one thing, that same person must be good at everything else. Whoa! Musk’s limits as a manager and a visionary were exposed when he barged about “streamlining” the government for President Trump.
It was a case of a bridge-too-far for Musk — a disaster for America that eroded privacy, critically wounded many departments and saved no money.
Whereas much of what Musk has achieved has been beneficial, his purchase of Twitter, rebranded to X, was evidence of the harm that is a part of gigantic wealth. He wanted to control not just the medium, but also the news.
Musk — although it isn’t good that he has taken steps to control the message with X — isn't the problem facing the media and the public’s right to know. When there is so much money floating around, news-media freedom is in trouble.
The immediate threat comes not from Musk, but from two other men of gargantuan wealth: Larry Ellison, co-founder of the tech firm Oracle Corp., whose personal net worth is estimated at $245 billion, and his son, David.
Together they are set to control the media to an extent not imagined and never seen. The media titans of yesteryear — Pulitzer, Hearst, Luce, Thompson, Sulzberger, Graham and Murdoch — are knee-high to the fearsome power that the Ellisons have, and which will more than double if (and it is more when than if) the merger of their Paramount Skydance Corp. with Warner Bros. Discovery is approved by regulators.
At present, the Ellisons control the CBS Television Network, CBS Sports, MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Paramount Network, and BET. They control CBS News, and Paramount+ which has 79 million streaming subscribers.
But if the merger goes through, they will control CNN, HBO Max, and Warner Bros. Studios — a treasure trove of entertainment.
In short, they will control a huge swath of American broadcast news, information dissemination, and movie and television culture.
Their declared purpose is to incorporate more technology and more AI across their astounding current and probably future empire. That is bad for journalism and worse for movies. The invasion of the bots.
I know how media control works. I have seen it firsthand: It isn’t what is said, but what is implied or what employees feel those who own the outlet want. A casual remark can become policy; a hint of preference can become a hard rule.
If an Ellison family member were — of course, this is hypothetical — to say they hated rhubarb, you could bet the Food Network wouldn’t do a show episode on rhubarb pie making. If it were known that one of the owners of Paramount were boosters of nuclear power, movies such as The China Syndrome and Silkwood would never have been made.
In journalism, the story that isn’t covered is as important as the one that is covered. If a disease caused by a common product — asbestos is a good example — isn’t covered because the staff has heard that the media owners love that product or is invested in it, then you can bet it won’t be covered.
Consolidated corporate ownership is antithetical to free speech, creativity, and open government. No news is bad news.
News isn’t suited to the corporate world; it isn’t a fit with those whose interest is adding zeros to bottom lines. It is the pursuit by an irregular army of often eccentric individuals, who turn over stones to find out what is beneath.
Likewise, individual ownership furthers the news objective, which for me was summed up by something Dan Raviv said when he was a correspondent for CBS Radio (recently shuttered by the Ellisons), “My job is simple. I try to find out what is going on and tell people.” Write that in the corporate prospectus.
News organizations need to be owned by news people, such as Ted Turner, Bill Paley and, yes, even Rupert Murdoch.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com, and he’s based in Rhode Island.