David Ellison is planning to buy Warner Bros Discovery, the company that owns HBO, CNN, and the Warner Bros movie studio. He’s doing this with money from his dad Larry Ellison. Larry bought controlling interest in Paramount Global in early September 2025. If David’s bid is allowed to go through the father and son team would control 2 of the largest 6 media empires (MSN). These 6 corporations control 90% of US media.

• Comcast
• Walt Disney
• Warner Bros. Discovery
• Paramount Global
• Sony
• Amazon

Source; Motley Fool

As we saw with the cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel (4dforum), this means censorship rights will be in the hands of around 15 billionaires and their hired CEOs. The CEO who pulled Kimmel was Dana Walden, a woman who is on the President’s Export Council. Although publicly traded, controlling interest is in the hands of people like Ellison.

Regardless of what you think of these people, it isn’t healthy for a democracy to have it’s media controlled by an elite few. There’s no reason for Trump to destroy the 1st Amendment when he has corporate elites to do it for him. It’s the next best thing to Tass News and is less obvious.

In fact, a set up like this can be tailor made to manipulate people. We know online media sharing sites collect massive amounts of data. This data is then plugged into algorithms by advertising agencies to increase sales by customizing ads. Why not use it for political manipulation?

Indeed, we’ve watched the media evolve into factional news coverage. People on the left rarely watch Fox News. People on the right rarely watch CNN. If these corporations feed conflicting messages to their different audiences they can create divisiveness in society; like we see right now.

The fairness doctrine of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, was a policy that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints – Wikipedia

This requirement of news organizations meant broadcasters would present more than one views, or opinion, on controversial topics. The doctrine was abandoned by the Reagan administration in 1997. This is what gave rise to radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh who pretended to be debating when he was actually using techniques of rhetoric, and possibly staged callers, who he shut down before they expressed opposing views.

If we’re being honest there are left wing propagandists doing the same thing. Tailoring messages designed to mislead people for large amounts of money. These messages can be imbued with false morality designed to prevent a deeper analysis of events. There is also censorship by omission to consider.

• Women raped in war-hit Sudan die by suicide, activists say BBC
• Erik Prince: Government needs private sector help for deportations Politico
• Russia’s Wagner Group leaves Mali, Africa Corps will stay Deutsche Welle
• Why Erdogan Has Abandoned the Uyghurs Foreign Policy
• Blackwater Founder Erik Prince Indicted For Arms Sales To Libya East County Magazine
• Arab nations tell Hamas to ‘disarm’ and end rule of Gaza after Starmer ultimatum The Independent