The Billionaire Media Takeover Is Nearly Complete

Here's how to fight with your time and resources

Last year, I wrote about how Trump purged independent journalists from the Pentagon and replaced them with right-wing propaganda outlets. I warned that media bias was about to get significantly worse. I wish I could tell you I was wrong.

I can’t. In fact, what has unfolded since makes that Pentagon press purge look like a dress rehearsal. And it’s more critical than ever we engage new tools to fight back. More on this in a minute.

We are now watching the most sweeping, systematic consolidation of media power in American history—happening on two fronts simultaneously, moving faster than most people can track, and being actively enabled by a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that was created specifically to prevent exactly this kind of takeover. And the most chilling part? It is designed to be invisible. By the time most Americans realize what’s happened, the deal will already be done. Let’s Address This.

Donald Trump described Larry Ellison this year as an ‘amazing man and amazing business person’ and ‘sort of CEO of everything’ (Image: Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

The First Front: One Billionaire. TikTok. CBS. CNN. HBO. Paramount.

Let me introduce you to Larry Ellison—or rather, re-introduce you, because most people still don’t fully understand what he’s quietly assembling.

Ellison is 81 years old, the founder of Oracle, a longtime Trump ally, and as of this writing, one of the wealthiest people on earth with a net worth exceeding $370 billion. For years, he was something of an outlier among tech billionaires—massive wealth, but no direct grip on the media you consume. That has now changed with breathtaking, alarming speed. In the span of months, the Ellison family has moved to take control of more of America’s media landscape than any single entity in modern history.

Here is what they now control or are actively acquiring:

TikTok’s U.S. operations. Oracle—Ellison’s company—is part of the investor consortium that acquired TikTok’s domestic operations. Under this deal, Oracle oversees TikTok’s data management and, critically, its content moderation. That means Ellison’s team now has extraordinary influence over what 170 million American users see every day, what gets amplified, and what gets suppressed. He has made clear that his mission is to advance right wing content, and suppress criticism of Trump, Israel, or anyone elevating the genocide in Gaza. Think about that. The algorithm shaping the political consciousness of an entire generation of Americans is now, in significant part, under the thumb of a man who hosts Trump fundraisers and whom a Trump adviser called a “shadow president of the United States.”

CBS News and Paramount. Ellison’s son David is the CEO of Paramount Skydance, which completed an $8 billion merger with Paramount Global—giving the Ellison family direct control over CBS News, Paramount Pictures, MTV, BET, Nickelodeon, and Paramount+. The political direction of this takeover is not subtle. One of Paramount’s first moves under new ownership was acquiring The Free Press, the right-wing media outlet run by Bari Weiss that has positioned itself as the self-declared leading, anti-woke voice on the internet. Since this takeover, CBS has killed a story on the illegal CECOT prison, stifled reporting on the illegal attack on Venezuela, and promoted right-wing disinformation on the genocide in Palestine and the illegal war on Iran. CBS News, once one of the most trusted names in journalism with voices like Walter Cronkite, is now about as reliable as the National Enquirer.

Warner Bros. Discovery—and with it, CNN and HBO. The Ellison family is now pursuing a bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in a deal that could exceed $111 billion. If it closes, the combined Ellison media portfolio would include CNN, CBS News, HBO, TikTok, Paramount+, and more. CNN alone draws 1.8 million viewers. CBS adds another 1.4 million. Together they would eclipse every other television news network in the country—combined.

This is not a series of unrelated business decisions. This is a coordinated consolidation of narrative power by a family ideologically aligned with an authoritarian administration. One man. One agenda. The news you watch on TV. The algorithm that decides your social media feed. The streaming service your kids use. All increasingly flowing through the same billionaire’s hands.

And we haven’t even gotten to what’s happening at the local level.

The Second Front: The FCC Just Handed 80% of Your Local TV News to One Corporation

While the Ellison empire assembles itself in plain sight on the national stage, something equally alarming—and far less covered—has been quietly unfolding at the local level.

The FCC under Chairman Brendan Carr recently approved a $6.2 billion merger between Nexstar Media Group and Tegna. You may not know those names. But here is what you absolutely need to understand: together, they now own 265 television stations in 44 states and the District of Columbia. Most of them are the local ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC affiliates you turn to for weather, breaking news, and local politics.

The combined Nexstar entity now reaches 80% of U.S. television households.

Let me be direct about what that means. When you sit down tonight and flip on your local news—that anchor you’ve watched for years, that station you trust because it feels familiar and close to home—there is now an 80% chance the company that owns it, dictates its editorial direction, and controls its resources is Nexstar. One company. 80% of local American TV news.

To make this merger happen, the FCC had to waive its own national ownership cap—a rule that had existed for decades specifically to prevent any single entity from owning stations reaching more than 39% of U.S. households. Chairman Carr didn’t go through Congress. He didn’t hold a public vote. He didn’t solicit meaningful consumer input. He waived the rule behind closed doors, without a full commission vote, and without transparency.

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat on the commission, said exactly what this is: she called it the “billionaire bypass.” Her words: if “you are a billionaire with business before a government agency and a perceived friend of the White House, your transaction will get fast-track approval.” She called the approval “flatly illegal.”

She’s right.

NY Times’ Eric Lee reports how FCC Chair Brendan Carr has threatened to revoke media licenses for corporate media critical of Trump’s illegal war on Iran.

Attorneys general from eight states have filed suit. A federal judge has issued a restraining order temporarily pausing the deal. California Governor Gavin Newsom called Carr “a disgrace.” Even Republican Senator Ted Cruz said the full commission should have voted on it. The legal fight is ongoing. But the regulatory damage—the signal sent to every broadcaster in America that compliance with this administration gets rewarded and resistance gets punished—that damage is already done.

This Is a Two-Front War. And the Battlefield Is Your Mind.

I need you to hold both of these stories in mind, because that’s what the architects of this takeover are counting on you not doing. They are counting on you treating each story as separate, isolated, too complicated, too distant from your daily life to matter.

It is not separate. It is one strategy with two arms.

On the national front: a Trump-aligned billionaire family is assembling control over TikTok, CBS, CNN, HBO, and Paramount—meaning the algorithm that shapes your social media feed and the anchors who deliver your evening news are increasingly operating under the same ideological ownership.

On the local front: an FCC chairman who has already demonstrated his willingness to threaten broadcast licenses over coverage that displeases the President is handing control of 80% of local TV news to a single corporation that has already proven it will flinch when the government calls.

This is the autocratic media playbook. It doesn’t always look like state-run television. Sometimes it looks like billionaires doing the state’s work voluntarily—enthusiastically—in exchange for favorable deals, regulatory protection, and proximity to power. The result is the same: a media environment in which independent, accountability-driven journalism becomes increasingly rare, increasingly sidelined, and increasingly difficult to find.

And here is the question that should keep you up at night: how would the average person even know?

How would you know that your local news station is now owned by a corporation that once pulled a comedian off the air at a regulator’s suggestion? How would you know that the TikTok algorithm curating your political reality is now managed by an Ellison-linked consortium? How would you know which billionaire funds which outlet, and what editorial priorities that funding quietly enforces?

Without the right tools, you probably wouldn’t. That information asymmetry is not an accident. It is a feature of the system these billionaires are building.

Which is exactly why what I’m about to tell you matters more than ever.

The Solution: Ground News Is the Antidote to Billionaire-Controlled Media

I don’t propose problems without offering solutions. And I will never ask you to fight without handing you a weapon first.

That weapon is Ground News—and right now, it is one of the most important tools available to anyone who wants to stay genuinely informed in an era of billionaire media consolidation.

Let me get something out of the way—I am choosing to let Ground News sponsor this piece because I find them to be an ethical, practical, and sustainable response to billionaire disinformation. Ground New is, notably, not owned by a billionaire. It is instead a website and app founded by a former NASA scientist that does something seemingly radical: it shows you exactly who is behind the news you’re consuming, and what they want you to think. Here’s how it works:

✅ Bias Ratings. Every source is categorized by political leaning—left, center, right—and overall reliability. When a single billionaire family can own CBS, CNN, and TikTok simultaneously, understanding the ideological fingerprint on your news is no longer optional. It is essential.

✅ Ownership and Funding Transparency. This is the feature I rely on most. Ground News tells you who owns and funds each outlet—so when you’re reading a Nexstar-owned local affiliate, or a Paramount-controlled CBS story, you know. You can factor that into how you consume and evaluate what you’re reading.

✅ Blind Spot Feed. This is extraordinary: Ground News shows you stories that are getting significant coverage on one side of the political spectrum but being ignored on the other. In a media environment increasingly controlled by ideologically aligned owners, the blind spots are often where the most important truths live.

✅ Full Comparative Context. It pulls related coverage from around the world into one place, so you can compare how different outlets with different ownership structures cover the same event. No algorithm feeding you one pre-approved version of reality. Just the full picture, across the spectrum, and the tools to evaluate it yourself.

Ground News is subscriber-supported. That means it answers to readers—not to Larry Ellison, not to Nexstar, not to Brendan Carr. Subscribe through my link, get 40% off the Vantage Plan—the same plan I personally use to research, fact-check, and write the pieces I publish—and arm yourself against the most dangerous media environment this country has seen in generations.

The Billionaires Are Betting You Won’t Fight Back. Prove Them Wrong.

Let me be honest with you. The situation is dire. It is more dire than it was a year ago, and a year from now—if we don’t fight—it will be more dire still. The legal challenges to the Nexstar merger may succeed. The Ellison bid for Warner Bros. may face scrutiny. People are fighting back—attorneys general, federal judges, independent journalists, and activists. I refuse to give up hope that accountability is still possible.

But the structural threat is real and it is accelerating. An FCC that rewards political compliance with billion-dollar merger approvals. A billionaire assembling a media empire with one hand while standing next to the president with the other. A regulatory framework being dismantled in real time, behind closed doors, without public debate.

Against all of that, the most powerful thing any one of us can do is refuse to be manipulated. Stay informed. Know your sources. Understand who owns what you’re reading, who funds what you’re watching, and what agenda is being served when that algorithm decides what you see next.

That is not a small act. In a war for your mind, clarity is resistance.