Ellison LARRY oracle
===
MERRI OK
richer than musk?! 9 25 PRIMARY
TRUMP PAL --> MEDIA OLIGARCH SEE PLUTO
SEE PRESS SUPPRESS
paramount cbs skydance TIKTOK
NAT PETROL CNCL?
AI THUS COAL?
MUSK BUYS TWIT
DAVID WANTS CNN
cia origins
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As of May 2014, Aaron's Law was stalled in committee, reportedly due to tech company Oracle's financial interests.[45]^
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60 MIN CECOT CENSOR 12 25
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ca bonta rolls on cnn merger
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see rev dr pjt huge in ai stargate, surveillance
AI Villains And The Trump Administration | Revolving Door Project
-=-=
cia origins 9 26
- Business Insider
- https://www.businessinsider.com › the-cia-made-larry-ellison-a-billionaire-2014-9?op=1
The CIA Made Larry Ellison a Billionaire - Business Insider
- The CIA was the customer that launched Oracle, co-founder Larry Ellison said on stage Sunday night.
- Gizmodo
- https://gizmodo.com › larry-ellisons-oracle-started-as-a-cia-project-1636592238
Larry Ellison's Oracle Started As a CIA Project - Gizmodo
- Yesterday, Vox somehow managed to write an entire article about the history of Oracle and its founder Larry Ellison without mentioning the CIA even once.
- Paleofuture
- https://paleofuture.com › blog › 2014 › 9 › 19 › larry-ellisons-oracle-started-as-a-cia-project
Larry Ellison's Oracle Started As a CIA Project - Paleofuture
- Yesterday, Vox somehow managed to write an entire article about the history of Oracle and its founder Larry Ellison without mentioning the CIA even once. Which is pretty astounding, given the fact that Oracle takes its name from a 1977 CIA project codename. And that the CIA was Oracle's first customer.
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MMA
02/23/26
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6 26
What Larry Ellison Is Building Is Way Sicker Than We Thought - YouTube
What Larry Ellison Is Building Is Way Sicker Than We Thought
Dangerously Informed with Evie
Jun 19, 2026
For decades, Larry Ellison was the billionaire nobody talked about. While Elon Musk dominated headlines, Jeff Bezos built an empire and Mark Zuckerberg became the face of social media, Ellison quietly accumulated power behind the scenes through a company most people barely understood. Now he's stepping out of the shadows. Sitting at the intersection of artificial intelligence, government technology, media ownership and politics, the Oracle founder suddenly finds himself connected to some of the most important systems in modern life. And the question is no longer who Larry Ellison is. The question is what happens when one man accumulates influence acros…. Everything
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Legacy outlets that bent the knee to Trump haven’t just lost credibility — they’re bleeding readers and viewers
Trumpism is bad for business: CBS News ratings are in a tailspin six months into Bari Weiss’ tenure
Written by Matt Gertz
:{:{Published 03/25/26}:
It turns out that there isn’t a ratings bump for MAGA capitulation.
David Ellison, the son of President Donald Trump’s megabillionaire ally Larry Ellison, took control of CBS last year following a corrupt deal that saw its parent company settle a lawsuit with the president and agree to implement a new conservative ombudsman for CBS News. As part of that takeover, he also installed conservative journalist Bari Weiss at the helm, promising that her “entrepreneurial drive and editorial vision” would “invigorate” the network. But six months into Weiss’ rightward makeover of CBS, the fruits of her labors include cheers from Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for making the network more palatable to their aims, complaints from the CBS newsroom that she is dismantling its independence — and, it now appears, a viewer exodus.
Status’ Oliver Darcy got ahold of some CBS News ratings data from the first quarter of 2026, and it is brutal. CBS Evening News has lost 7% of viewers year-over-year, placing it “on track for its lowest-rated first quarter of the 21st century in both total viewers and the advertiser-coveted 25-54 demographic,” while CBS Mornings plummeted 13% and “is pacing toward its lowest-rated quarter on record in both total audience and the key demo.” Meanwhile, the audiences of competitor shows at ABC News and NBC News grew over the same period.
The ratings collapse is a devastating indictment of the strategy Ellison and Weiss are executing at CBS — and a blaring warning for CNN if Ellison is able to complete his takeover of that network and let Weiss run the same playbook there.
Meanwhile, new data from the Alliance for Audited Media show that while average daily print circulation among major audited newspapers saw year-over-year declines across the board in the six months running through the end of September 2025, the biggest drops came at The Washington Post, which fell 21.2%, followed by the Los Angeles Times, down 19.8%. Their billionaire owners — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and biotech mogul Patrick Soon-Shiong, respectively — had responded to Trump’s return to the White House by trying to shift their papers to the right.
None of this should come as a surprise.
Ellison and Weiss have suggested that the core problem for American media is that the public does not trust news outlets, and that the reason for this is that the public perceives those outlets as too far left and too critical of the right. They propose to win over a larger audience by deliberately course-correcting in the opposite direction.
“We are not producing a product that enough people want,” Weiss said at a CBS News staff town hall in January. Weiss attributed this to two factors. “First: Not enough people trust us. Not you. Us. As in: the mainstream media,” she said. “Second: We are not doing enough to meet audiences where they are. So they are leaving us.”
Weiss is correct that trust in traditional media has fallen dramatically in recent decades, particularly among conservatives — indeed, this is a banal truth that everyone remotely connected to the media knows. But her strategy of conceding that potential viewers are correct to distrust journalists and seeking to “meet audiences where they are” by signaling that coverage will now be deliberately shifted to the right has had the obvious result of driving away the existing audience without adding a new one.
CBS News’ viewers either liked what they were already watching or they liked what watching Edward R. Murrow’s old network said about them. When the network’s new ownership and management proposed taking its programming in a dramatically different direction in search of a different audience — as the wildly unpopular president cheered — the existing viewers could see that, and some decided that CBS is no longer worth their patronage.
Weiss’ theory of the case is that these losses could be made up by new viewers with more right-leaning views. But the decline in public trust for traditional media among Republicans stems at least in part from a decades-long strategy pursued deliberately by the GOP and conservative movement. That effort revolves around simultaneously denouncing news outlets as liberal propaganda while encouraging conservatives to instead patronize new, deliberately right-wing news sources. And it’s been taken to another level under Trump, who relentlessly attacks the press while using state power to reduce its influence and lift up the MAGA media operation.
That dynamic makes it wildly implausible that the shift Weiss enacted would win over a sizable new segment of viewers. Her version of CBS may garner praise from Trump, but people who might be swayed by his comments already have — and are likely already patronizing — a plethora of pro-Trump outlets. You could imagine a scenario where some slightly more right-wing viewers of the ABC and NBC news shows switched to watching the new CBS. But instead, the data Darcy cited suggests, CBS appears to be shedding viewers who are instead watching its competitors — or exiting broadcast television altogether as their news source.
As for Bezos’ Post and Soon-Shiong’s Times, when the owners similarly bet on trying to make their outlets more acceptable to Trump, their existing audiences looked for the exits and were not replaced. The efforts may win over the likes of Tucker Carlson or even the president himself, but MAGA isn’t rushing to buy subscriptions.
For Ellison, Bezos, and Soon-Shiong, the declines in their news outlets may be a small price to pay to win over Trump. Each owner has massive business holdings outside of the press and can afford the losses from tearing down their news outlets if it wins the Trump administration’s support for their desired mergers, contracts, or patents.
The journalists facing layoffs from their outlets — and the public who lose access to their reporting — are the ones who will actually suffer from this doomed strategy.
//
02/27/17
02/17/26
12/03/25
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MMA
The year the media oligarchs bowed to Trump
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 12/03/25
We warned last year that Donald Trump’s second term as president would turbo-charge the political right’s burgeoning media-intimidation complex. Republican officials and right-wing billionaires were already trying to secure their political agenda by using their wealth, lawfare, and government power to silence journalists. And Trump, we wrote, using his authoritarian strategies, would force media moguls to choose between the journalistic integrity of the news outlets they oversee and their broader business interests, with the fate of the free press in the balance.
Twelve months later, it is clear that many of these corporate media owners have made their choice: They are damaging celebrated news outlets like CBS and The Washington Post out of some combination of personal preference and political expedience. While journalists at their outlets are still producing important stories that reveal the corruption and malfeasance of the Trump administration, it’s anyone’s guess how long they will be permitted to do so.
Trump has spent the last decade at war with the press. He has no regard for free speech, treats all dissent as inherently illegitimate, and uses every available tool to curtail critical journalism. The president’s years of anti-media diatribes have achieved their goal of destroying the credibility of potentially damaging reporting among his supporters, and in his second term, he has backed up those verbal attacks with a flurry of actions.
He and his administration have supplemented or even replaced members of the traditional press corps in favor of MAGA influencers and Trumpist outlets; defunded public media outlets in the U.S. and sought to dismantle them abroad; sued reporters and news outlets for publishing content he dislikes; and terminated rules protecting journalists from prosecutorial scrutiny, while targeting them with retaliatory immigration enforcement.
But Trump’s most unnerving assaults on the press involve his administration's use of state power as leverage against oligarchs who control broadcast and cable news operations and major newspapers. For billionaire owners or top executives at massive multimedia companies, news outlets typically represent a tiny fraction of their overall business interests. And those broader holdings create potential vulnerabilities — like regulatory scrutiny of mergers, federal contracting, and criminal investigations — that an authoritarian president can manipulate to encourage media moguls to cudgel their news outlets into line.
Trump’s strategies resemble those of Victor Orban, the Hungarian autocrat many on the American right take as a model, who has dismantled his country’s independent press and forced the sales of outlets to his allies. Trump's desired result is a cowed journalist corps that will produce Fox News-style propaganda venerating his successes and covering up his corruption and failures.
America’s media oligarchs often resisted Trump’s corrupt abuses of power in his first term, either enduring his attacks without constraining their news outlets or beating his administration in federal court. But in his second term, while some media organizations (including Media Matters) have fought to protect the First Amendment against Trump and his administration, certain wealthy magnates have chosen the path of cowardice, submission, and collaboration.
David and Larry Ellison
David Ellison is the son of Larry Ellison, the Oracle co-founder who is one of the richest men alive and a close friend and ally to Trump. The younger Ellison took control of CBS News in July after the Federal Communications Commission approved his Skydance Media’s purchase of CBS parent company Paramount. Trump-appointed FCC Chair Brendan Carr acted only after Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle an absurd lawsuit Trump filed over CBS News’ editing of an October interview with then-Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris — and after he secured pledges from Skydance to push the network’s coverage to the right.
Ellison followed through on his promise. The new ownership appointed “anti-woke” champion Bari Weiss as CBS News’ editor-in-chief and Kenneth Weinstein, a Trump-supporting right-wing think tanker, as its ombudsman. An October wave of layoffs hit nearly 100 CBS News employees, gutting the network’s teams focused on climate change and race and culture. Trump certainly seems happy with the changes — in a November 2 interview that marked his first appearance on the network since 2020, he praised Weiss as a “great new leader” and “great person” and described David Ellison’s takeover of CBS News as “the greatest thing that’s happened in a long time to a free and open and good press.”
With the CBS News takeover as proof of concept, Ellison and his father are each making moves to seize additional media outlets and move them in a Trumpy direction.
David Ellison is trying to buy Warner Bros. Discovery — and the administration is reportedly signaling that other bidders will face grueling oversight from federal regulators. “Trump wants WBD in the Ellisons’ hands, and insiders say it’s because he wants favorable coverage from its CNN news channel,” wrote the New York Post.
Larry Ellison has even reportedly “engaged in a dialogue” with the White House “about possibly axing some of the CNN hosts whom Donald Trump is said to loathe, including Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar,” if the sale were to go through.
The Trump White House is also trying to broker a deal in which the social media giant TikTok, a news source for one-fifth of American adults and 43% of those under 30, would be sold to a coalition including companies controlled by Larry Ellison as well as fellow pro-Trump magnate Marc Andreessen.
- ### Jeff Bezos
Bezos owns The Washington Post, but his massive fortune comes from founding Amazon, the online retailing and web service giant, and he also owns the space technology company Blue Origin. During Trump’s first term, Bezos bore numerous potshots at what Trump termed the “Amazon Washington Post,” as well as his administration’s apparent retaliation against Amazon’s operations. But Bezos signaled that things would be different in a second term even before Trump’s election when he barred the Post’s editorial board from endorsing in the 2024 contest, blocking the publication of its piece supporting Harris.
The decision began a deterioration of Bezos’ relationship with the Post, accelerated further by his February demand that the paper’s Opinion section advocate without exception for “personal liberties and free markets.” Opinion editor David Shipley resigned rather than execute that pivot; his replacement, Adam O’Neal, an undistinguished reporter and editor previously at The Economist and The Wall Street Journal, has overseen buyouts and layoffs of the section’s veterans (my wife Alyssa Rosenberg, the section’s former letters and community editor, was among those who took the buyout) and hired several conservative writers, leading one of the paper’s right-wing columnists to boast, “We’re now a conservative opinion page.” The dramatic changes seem to have blown a hole in the Post’s subscriber numbers, with NPR’s David Folkenflik estimating “a net loss of a couple hundred thousand subscribers” at the end of February. With revenue plummeting thanks to Bezos’ decisions and the owner unwilling to eat the losses, more layoffs are reportedly on the way.
But defanging the Post — and finding a way to put money in the Trump family’s pockets — seems to be working out well for Bezos. His rewards include plum seats for Trump’s swearing-in, federal contracts for Blue Origin and Amazon Web Services, and the president publicly applauding him for “trying to do a real job with The Washington Post, and that wasn’t happening before.”
### Patrick Soon-Shiong
Like Bezos, Los Angeles Times owner Soon-Shiong has other business interests that left him vulnerable to Trump’s retaliation; he made his fortune in the biotech industry, and his medical patents and products are subject to federal oversight. Whether due to fear of retribution or a shift in his own political views, Soon-Shiong stepped up his oversight of the Times last year, beginning with the cancellation of a planned endorsement of Harris.
He subsequently shilled for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation as secretary of health and human services; announced a remaking of the editorial board, beginning with the addition of pro-Trump CNN commentator Scott Jennings; killed an editorial that criticized Trump’s Cabinet picks; announced the addition of an AI-powered “bias meter” to the paper’s opinion pieces, which was pulled after it downplayed the Ku Klux Klan; floated a conservative version of The View featuring right-wing actor Rob Schneider; launched “LA Times Studios,” a multimedia studio featuring influencers reading AI-generated scripts; sat for interviews with right-wing commentators including Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly; and put forward an ill-starred initial public offering plan which led The Hollywood Reporter to ask, “Does Patrick Soon-Shiong Want to Turn the L.A. Times Into a MAHA Memestock?”
As with Bezos’ actions at the Post, Soon-Shiong’s changes to the Times have resulted in plummeting circulation, an exodus of talent, and the diminishment of the paper’s influence. But his medical patents are still getting approved by the federal government.
- ### Bob Iger
Iger, who as the CEO of Disney oversees its subsidiary ABC, was at the center of two of the most craven media moves since Trump’s reelection.
First, his December 2024 decision to sign off on a $15 million “blood sacrifice to Trump,” settling a defamation lawsuit that ABC News’ lawyers thought they would win, only looks worse over time. The capitulation made clear to ABC staff that Iger would not support them in a stand-off with the president and set a precedent that media companies and other major corporations would knuckle under to his demands.
Second, after Carr threatened Disney and ABC’s affiliates with FCC retribution if they failed to “take actions” against Jimmy Kimmel over one of his monologues in September, Iger folded by suspending Kimmel’s show within hours. Carr’s threats made a mockery of the First Amendment — but Iger wasn’t willing to fight to uphold those rights in court. Iger relented and returned Kimmel to the airwaves only after an outcry by Hollywood talent and a spike in Disney+ cancellations.
What did Iger’s cowardice bring ABC? When ABC News chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce dared to ask Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a question about his role in the brutal murder of the U.S.-based dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi during a joint Oval Office appearance with Trump, the president became enraged, lashing out at the journalist and calling her outlet “fake news” and “one of the worst in the business.”
“I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and it’s so wrong,” he later added, threatening to shut down a U.S. news outlet for producing reporting he doesn’t like in front of a foreign dictator who represses his own country’s media.
“And we have a great commissioner, a chairman, who should look at that," he added.
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mma
10/24/25
10/24/25 might get anchor?
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MMA
September 17, 2025, edition of MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes
CHRIS HAYES (HOST): So given that context, I want you to look around the U.S. right now and see what's been happening here, right in front of our eyes. In July, the Trump FCC — that's the entity that Brendan Carr controls — approved the sale of Paramount, with it CBS, to Skydance Media, which is controlled by the family of pro-Trump tech billionaire named Larry Ellison. It was his son, actually, who's buying it. Now that approval only came after Paramount paid Trump $60 million to settle the president's obvious frivolous, ludicrous lawsuit against CBS News and 60 Minutes for editing interviews, and after the Ellisons agreed to eliminate DEI programs, and after they agreed to install an executive formerly from a conservative think tank to essentially act as a sort of ideological minder at CBS News for political bias. So they did all those things, then they got the approval for this very, very large merger. After that, CBS canceled Stephen Colbert's top-rated late-night show, which was notorious for its criticism of the sitting president.
Last week, after Larry Ellison officially leapfrogged another pro-Trump billionaire, Elon Musk, to become the world's richest man, the new Paramount conglomerate made another media bid, this time for Warner Brothers Discovery, which just so happens to own CNN. So there's a possibility that they could purchase that and roll that up as well. Then yesterday we got this news about TikTok, perhaps you've seen it. Do you remember the Chinese-owned app that was banned as a security risk because of a bipartisan vote in both houses of Congress and signed into law by Joe Biden? And then Donald Trump just literally ignored the law while he searched for a U.S. buyer. Well, yesterday there was news of a framework of a deal. Interesting. Let's see what the deal is — gives Americans an 80% stake in TikTok. Which Americans? Well, you'll never guess. Yes, Larry Ellison is one of them, along with far-right venture capitalist, Trump donor, DOGE consultant, MAGA-backer Marc Andreessen.
As Talking Points Memo noted, if all those deals all go through that would mean the Murdoch family controlling Fox News, the Journal, New York Post, its other properties. Twitter, TikTok, CBS, CNN and more owned by Elon Musk and the Ellison family. The Washington Post owned by Jeff Bezos. The Trump administration is threatening to bring the government down on free speech and use it against dissent. It is also facilitating the sale of some of our biggest private media outlets to Trump allies, and is a very obvious attempt to consolidate power over free expression.
//
07/23/25 9:56 PM EDT
07/18/25 10:06 PM EDT
07/16/25 10:16
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mma
Jimmy Kimmel and the MAGA strong-arming of American media
Written by Matt Gertz
:{:{Published09/18/25}:
As with so many of the Trump administration’s excesses, a simple recitation of the events leading to Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension sounds like something out of dystopian fiction. ABC’s Wednesday night announcement that it was putting Jimmy Kimmel Live! on indefinite hiatus in the face of White House threats is the latest sign that U.S. media are increasingly coming under the control of President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement.
Trump had been targeting Kimmel and ABC for months. In the wake of frequent administration critic Stephen Colbert’s July announcement that his late-night show was ending, the president gloated that Kimmel would be “NEXT to go.” Last month, Trump argued that the Federal Communications Commission should revoke the licenses of ABC stations because it broadcasts too many “BAD STORIES” about him and provides “unfair coverage of Republicans.” And on Monday morning, he threatened ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl, saying that Attorney General Pam Bondi might target him and his network for purportedly airing anti-Trump “hate speech.”
Kimmel inaccurately suggested during his Monday night monologue that the alleged killer of Turning Points USA founder Charlie Kirk was part of “the MAGA gang.” Under ordinary circumstances, such a statement could result in a correction and apology. But Kimmel’s remarks occurred in an environment in which Trump and his administration are eager to punish political speech they dislike.
Brendan Carr, the FCC’s Trumpy chair, wielded Kimmel’s monologue as a cudgel against his network during a Tuesday appearance on right-wing influencer Benny Johnson’s show. Carr accused Kimmel of “an intentional effort to mislead the American people” and threatened Disney and ABC’s affiliates with regulatory retribution in response, saying: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
He specifically suggested that affiliate networks should tell Disney that they would not run Kimmel’s show “until you straighten this out” and insinuated that they could face “license revocation from the FCC” if they did not.
Carr’s threats appear to be a clear violation of the First Amendment — but that matters only if Disney and the affiliate networks are willing to fight to uphold those rights in court.
Instead, Nexstar Media Group, which needs FCC approval for its proposed purchase of the stations owned by media company Tegna, said its affiliates would immediately preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! Shortly after, Disney announced that it was putting the show on hiatus. And Sinclair Broadcasting Group, owned by the pro-Trump Smith family, said it would not return Kimmel’s show to its airwaves until ABC committed to “appropriate steps” and called for the late-night host to make a “meaningful personal donation” to Kirk's right-wing political group.
Carr subsequently joined Fox News’ Sean Hannity to take a curtain call and praise Nexstar and Sinclair for following his dictates.
It’s worth pointing out that neither Johnson nor Hannity could operate under Carr’s stated standard — but they had no objections to his statements because they understand that his actual goal is enforcing MAGA political correctness norms by which they already abide.
This capitulation is only the latest sign of increasing MAGA control over the free press
Trump has long benefited from a massive parallel right-wing ecosystem, from Fox News to talk radio to a host of MAGA streamers and influencers. But since Trump won election last fall, more and more of the corporate titans who control the U.S. media have come under his thumb.
When Trump attempted similar extortion tactics during his first term, the heads of media companies and owners of news outlets were willing to fight him in court. But since his election in November, executives at companies like Disney have proved far more willing to bend to his will.
Other news outlets either are owned by businessmen who have become more Trump-friendly (perhaps due to fears of retribution), like The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, or have been taken over by businessmen with close ties to the president, like CBS News’ new Trump approved-owner David Ellison. More such consolidation is under way, with Ellison seeking to take over CNN and the Trump White House effectively nullifying the law as it tries to broker a deal in which TikTok would be sold to a coalition including companies controlled by his father, Larry Ellison, and fellow pro-Trump magnate Marc Andreessen.
Reporters at those outlets can and have continued to do vital reporting about the Trump administration under those circumstances. But they do so with knowledge that their ultimate bosses will not stand behind them in a pinch.
Other potential corporate targets like Comcast, which Trump has previously threatened over the coverage of NBC and MSNBC, have not yet faced the same level of retaliatory scrutiny. But their day will inevitably come, particularly after Trump and Carr saw how quickly Disney folded in the face of their Kimmel attack.
The New York Times is among the few major news outlets that has no choice but to stand up for its output and a free press because its ownership does not have other substantial business interests. But Trump is targeting them in a different way — this week, he launched a $15 billion defamation lawsuit over reporting that questioned his business acumen.
And in a sign that even regime-aligned owners will face punishment for critical reporting, Trump filed a lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and its corporate parent’s chairman, Fox founder Rupert Murdoch, seeking $10 billion in damages over the paper’s coverage of his ties to disgraced financier and deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump’s endgame is clear. He wants to ensure that media outlets don’t produce coverage that criticizes him or his administration, but instead convey an endless stream of propaganda about his accomplishments.
He wants every outlet to be Fox News. And at this rate, he may get it.
//
08/25/25 12:40 PM EDT
10/29/24 9:09 AM EDT
09/09/25
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an 9 25
the New York Times reports Larry Ellison is already a major stakeholder in CBS and Paramount, but now he’s angling for the massive empire of CNN and HBO, as well as a major share of TikTok.
“If all goes as anticipated, this tech billionaire, already one of the richest men in the world and a founder of Oracle, is poised, at 81, to become one of the most powerful media and entertainment moguls America has ever seen,” writes Puck cofounder William D. Cohan.
The move has echoes of Rupert Murdoch buying up Fox News a generation ago and giving the Republican Party an exclusive platform to pipe its talking points directly to U.S. viewers.
READ MORE: 'Sided with Democrats': Nancy Mace melts down at 4 Republicans who sank her censure motion
Ellison is up to something very different from millionaires buying up the Washington Post and Time Magazine, said Cohan. Ellison wants to be a media magnate.
“Along with his son, David, he could soon end up controlling a powerful social media platform, an iconic Hollywood movie studio and one of the largest content streaming services, as well as two of the country’s largest news organizations,” Cohan wrote. “Given Mr. Ellison’s friendship with, and affinity for, Donald Trump, an increasingly emboldened president could be getting an extraordinarily powerful media ally — in other words, the very last thing our country needs right now.”
Cohan said Ellison and his son were serious about making Paramount Skydance a major new media force within weeks of buying it, and the “Ellisons have also made no secret of their intention to move CBS News to the right.”
“They are negotiating to acquire The Free Press, a heterodox publication co-founded by Bari Weiss that prioritizes criticism of “woke” culture, and put Ms. Weiss in a senior position at CBS News. The Ellisons also hired as the CBS ombudsman Kenneth Weinstein, the former chief executive of the conservative Hudson Institute. See where this is going, and fast?” asked Cohan.
READ MORE: It is happening here — and we just witnessed the moment everything changed
“No matter their motives, two independent journalistic voices, CBS News and CNN, could soon be combined into something potentially almost unrecognizable, something way too close to what is served up on a daily basis by the Murdochs,” said Cohan.
“And that will put yet another chink in the fragile armor that is America’s democracy.”
Read the New York Times report at this link
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MMA
Trump calls for FCC retribution against “FAKE NEWS” ABC and NBC — while touting the “great man” who “just bought CBS”
How to get off Trump’s media shit list
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 08/25/25
President Donald Trump sent a clear message over the weekend that media companies can forestall his vicious denunciations and threats of federal retribution. All their owners have to do is bend the knee and grant his administration sufficient reassurance that their news outlets won’t prove troublesome.
Trump urged the Federal Communications Commission to punish two of the “Big Three” national broadcast networks for their political content, a straightforward assault on the First Amendment, in a pair of Sunday night posts.
The president condemned ABC and NBC as “FAKE NEWS” and an “actual threat to our Democracy” because they purportedly run too many “BAD STORIES” about him and provide “unfair coverage of Republicans.” He added that in response, these outlets should either “HAVE THEIR LICENSES REVOKED BY THE FCC” or be forced to pay “Millions of Dollars a year in LICENSE FEES.”
CBS, the third of the “Big Three,” escaped Trump’s malice.
As recently as April, Trump denounced CBS as “out of control, at levels never seen before,” and called upon FCC chair Brendan Carr to “impose the maximum fines and punishment, which is substantial, for their unlawful and illegal behavior.” Carr at the time was corruptly delaying the purchase of CBS parent company Paramount by Skydance Media, owned by David Ellison, the son of billionaire Silicon Valley mogul and close Trump ally Larry Ellison, in response to Trump’s frivolous lawsuit over CBS News’ handling of a 60 Minutes interview with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in October 2024.
But since then:
- Trump got his payoff. Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to Trump’s presidential library to settle the lawsuit and resolve “a threatened defamation action concerning a separate 60 Minutes report,” the company announced on July 1. The president subsequently claimed there is a side deal in which Paramount will air $16-19 million in free public service announcements.
- CBS canceled Stephen Colbert’sThe Late Show.Colbert, an outspoken Trump critic, announced on July 17 that CBS was ending his program. While CBS insiders argued that “the move was financially driven, not politically motivated,” the announcement came the same week Ellison met Carr and other FCC officials in hopes of securing the merger. Trump, for his part, responded the following morning, “I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired.”
- Reports circulated over a possible Bari Weiss role with CBS. The Status newsletter’s Oliver Darcy reported in late June that Ellison was seeking to recruit Weiss, the conservative journalist whose outlet The Free Press provides a sort of permission structure for centrists to support Trump over Democrats, “to work in some capacity” at CBS. In mid-July, several outlets reported that Ellison and Weiss were discussing a possible deal in which Skydance would buy The Free Press.
- The FCC approved Skydance purchase of Paramount late last month, citing Skydance’s “commitment to make significant changes” at CBS News.The FCC announced on July 24 that it had approved the acquisition. Carr cited in an accompanying statement “Skydance’s commitment to make significant changes at the once storied CBS broadcast network,” its provision of “written commitments to ensure that the new company’s programming embodies a diversity of viewpoints from across the political and ideological spectrum,” and its pledge to “root out the bias that has undermined trust in the national news media.”
- Massive layoffs are looming over CBS. It would be difficult to convince or compel CBS News’ current slate of journalists to lay off the president — but it’s easy to fire them. After Variety reported last week that CBS News staffers “are worried about the potential for a new round of layoffs,” the New York Post reported Friday that a “bloodbath” of layoffs at Paramount Skydance is expected in early November.
The moves were more than enough to get CBS off Trump’s media shit list. In fact, the president recently lavished praise on its new owner, Paramount Skydance chief executive David Ellison.
“CBS was just sold to a great person that I know very well,” Trump told reporters on Friday. “A great man. He actually just bought CBS. And I think he‘s going to do the right thing with it.”
Trump’s authoritarian assault on the free press offers media moguls both sticks and carrots — and too many of them have decided they would rather submit to his will than fight. Just seven months into his administration, he’s already forced one of the major broadcast networks to yield. Two to go.
//
04/28/25 1:22 PM EDT
07/23/25 11:57 AM EDT
02/04/25
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SON BOUGHT PARAMOUNT W TRUMP FCC
CLEANTECHNICA
...Final Thoughts about Landman: The Power behind Paramount Media
Paramount Global—the sprawling media empire behind CBS, MTV, and one of Hollywood’s most storied movie studios— was acquired by Skydance Media in late 2024. The complex deal, worth over $8 billion, happened in a two-step transaction that involved Skydance first acquiring Paramount’s controlling company, Shari Redstone’s National Amusements, and then merging Skydance and Paramount. Founded by David Ellison in 2006, Skydance specializes in films, animation, television, video games, and sports.
The week after the November election, once-and-future President Donald J. Trump gathered his top advisers in the tea room at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, to plan the transition to his second-term government, as reported by the New York Times. Two valued houseguests were the billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the billionaire co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison.
“I brought the two richest people in the world today,” Trump told his advisers, according to a person who was in the room. “What did you bring?”
Ellison brings a vast communications conglomerate to Trump’s feet. Is he, like the “Landman” billionaire, someone who has helped to elect friendly politicians and to provide lobbying to maintain billions of dollars in subsidies to Big Oil? It’s hard to explain otherwise.
Mr. Ellison, please rein in your boy Taylor and use your ample billions for clean energy, the common good, and truth.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/montana-gop-lawmakers-made-fortunes-at-tech-giant-oracle-and-became-its-best-friends-in-dc
salon
montana Republicans Sen. Steve Daines and Rep. Greg Gianforte share a tight financial and legislative history with each other and with the tech giant Oracle that goes back years. That relationship has netted each of them several million dollars and made Gianforte one of the wealthiest members of Congress.
Both have also used their offices to support legislation and other initiatives for which Oracle spent significant time and money lobbying, and from which the company stood to gain financially — including through defense contracts.
Additionally, both are up for election this year: Daines is running for re-election to the Senate, in a tight race with current Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, while Gianforte is trying to move from the House — where he serves as the state’s lone representative — to the governor’s mansion.
Gianforte made his fortune from RightNow Technologies, a Bozeman-based tech company he co-founded with his wife in 1997, where Daines served as an executive for 12 years. In 2011, Gianforte sold the company to Oracle for $1.5 billion, at the time holding between 20% and 25% of the company’s stock, which was valued at between $300 million and $400 million, according to statements he made to the Billings Gazette.
that sale sent 100 jobs to Texas, according to a report in the Missoulan, but Gianforte stayed, working in a consulting capacity until March 2013, per his LinkedIn page.
The sale went a long way toward making Gianforte the wealthiest member of Congress, a title he held until last year when he was displaced by appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., whose husband is CEO of the New York Stock Exchange
The Gianforte Family Trust holds more than $190 million in assets, as of its 2018 tax filing, and supports a number of ultra-conservative organizations and efforts, including helping to build a creationist museum in Glendive, Montana, that depicts humans coexisting with dinosaurs.
Daines reported that between 2011 and 2012, when he stepped away from the company to run for Senate, RightNow and Oracle paid him a combined $550,882 in salary. He also reported earning between $2 million and $10 million over those two years, according to disclosures.
Since 1998, Daines and Gianforte, through their company Genesis Partners, have shared a stake in a Bozeman office complex called Genesis Business Park, which rented space to RightNow and subsequently Oracle. The complex currently hosts an Oracle campus, which Gianforte told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle in 2015 had a 10-year lease, which is apparently set to expire next March.
Between 2015 dna 2018, Daines pulled in between $485,000 and $5.1 million per year in rent from the office park, and 2012 through 2014 earned between $100,001 and $1 million, according to his federal disclosure forms.
Gianforte reported earning between $50,000 and $100,000 from rent and capital gains through Genesis Partners, per his disclosures.
In fact, Daines officially filed his candidacy for Senate from the Oracle offices in Bozeman, which he had leased to the company. From the Missoula Independent:
Critics have since speculated that [Daines’] years at the company and the money netted by executives through the Oracle purchase were the springboard from which Daines launched his political career. In fact, according to a February 2014 article in the Billings Gazette, Daines officially filed his candidacy for the U.S. Senate from his iPhone while at the Bozeman offices of Oracle.
While in congress, Daines and Gianforte have pushed legislation that would benefit Oracle, including bills lobbied on by Oracle, federal reports show.
Daines introduced an amendment to a 2017 spending bill (SB 2943) that included spending to “ensure higher quality cybersecurity” for Department of Energy and Pentagon nuclear command and communication systems. Oracle had previously been awarded DOE contracts to do software work for the National Nuclear Security Administration, as well as DOD contracts for electronics and communications equipment.
Oracle reported that it lobbied on that bill for those specific issues, expending nearly $2 million on lobbying that quarter alone, government disclosures show.
The Montana legislative duo also supported billions of dollars in federal government procurement on which Oracle had lobbied.
Daines also voted to allocate billions of dollars for procurement as part of the fiscal 2016 and fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAAs), Gianforte effectively voted in favor of the 2017 and 2020 NDAAs, both of which Oracle lobbied on.
Specifically, Oracle lobbied on issues related to IT, cloud and cybersecurity procurement policies, spending nearly $2 million lobbying on both, according to disclosures.
Furthermore, Daines used committee markups in 2015 and 2016 to increase funding for cybersecurity measures by nearly $2 billion, while Oracle touted its cybersecurity work with the federal government — specifically the Pentagon.
Daines also worked to boost cybersecurity innovation in the private sector, introducing legislation to get cybersecurity interests a seat at the table of a Workforce Advisory Board.
Oracle, whose complete cloud services division took in about $27.4 billion per year, lobbied on “cloud computing issues” throughout Daines’ time in Congress.
Daines similarly supported millions of dollars in funding for artificial intelligence (AI) programs, which Oracle stood to benefit from substantially, as the company offered an array of products incorporating AI and machine learning.
Daines has routinely advocated for private sector advantages on those issues, while Oracle promoted its government collaborations and spent millions lobbying for spending increases, including nearly $2 million for AI.
Daines and Gianforte both supported rolling back net neutrality,which Oracle publicly supported — and though many tech companies share the same interests, Daines and Gianforte used their offices to oppose policies supported by Oracle competitors, most specifically Google.
One such measure was the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, which held website operators liable for third-party content that promotes sex trafficking. According to the Verge, Oracle publicly supported that bill in an effort to harm their competitors, specifically Google:
Why Oracle would come out so publicly in favor of the bill is less obvious, since the law lacks even a tenuous connection to their business model. However the company’s animosity towards Google is well-documented, from its $9 billion lawsuit over Android, to Oracle’s funding of the Google Transparency Project, which put out a report earlier this year claiming that Google had bought academic influence through grants. In a bizarre way, Google has become the favorite target of those who support SESTA.
The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported in 2015 that Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock had met with Oracle competitors Google and Facebook ahead of his 2016 re-election bid, apparently in an effort to lure more tech competitors to Montana’s Northern Rocky tech apparatus. Bullock defeated Gianforte in that election, and is now running against Daines in one of the nation’s most closely-watched Senate races.
Daines once sent a letter to Google voicing concerns about their personal health information protection mechanisms, requesting the company provide information on the subject. Coincidentally, Oracle also criticized its chief rival’s data collection, and played a key role in launching an Australian government probe into Google over its collection practices.
In 2017, Daines called on Oracle CEO Safra Catz to join a tech jobs summit that he hosted.
Gianforte co-sponsored and voted in favor of an Oracle-backed immigration bill, the Fairness For High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019, on which Oracle lobbied, according to federal disclosures.
Gianforte also supported intelligence authorization legislation that Oracle lobbied on, voting in favor of an intelligence authorization act in 2018, 2019 and 2020, per Senate records.
In addition to the millions of dollars that Daines and Gianforte made from their business relationships with Oracle, including ongoing rent, the company has contributed financially to the two lawmakers’ election campaigns.
Daines for his part has taken over $56,000 in campaign contributions from Oracle over his career, making the company one of his top 10 contributors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Oracle employees have contributed $10,700 to Gianforte over the course of his two congressional bids.
Daines currently appears to hold a lead over Bullock in this year’s Senate race, and President Trump is expected to easily carry Montana. But the state has a history of being politically unpredictable, and Democratic Sen. Jon Tester successfully held his seat in 2018.
Gianforte faces a tougher challenge against Democratic Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney, in a race currently rated as a “toss-up” in the RealClearPolitics average of polls.
Gianforte first won his House seat in a tight 2017 special election, after former Rep. Ryan Zinke joined Trump’s cabinet for his spectacularly scandal-studded stint as secretary of the Interior. On the eve of Gianforte’s election he made worldwide headlines for body-slamming Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs, and was convicted of assault in Montana state court the next month (after winning the election). The judge handed down a fine and sentenced the representative-elect to community service and anger management therapy.
As a result of the terms of the settlement, Gianforte gave the Committee to Protect Journalists $50,000, about 1/4,000 of his total estimated net worth.
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omg
Oracle employees plan walk off after boss holds pro-Trump fundraiser
Sky Palma / Raw StoryFebruary 20, 2020
After the co-founder of the mega software company Oracle hosted a pro-Trump fundraiser this Wednesday, a group of the company’s employees signed a protest petition and planned a walkout for the following day.
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- Ellison – Estimated worth: $52.2 billion. Contributions since 1989: $9.5 million
The founder of software company Oracle is No. 35 on our 2016 list, giving $5.5 million. Most of that went to pro-Marco Rubio super PACs, Conservative Solutions PAC ($5 million) and Florida First Project ($350,000), during Rubio’s presidential run.
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Out of the $16 million raised by Conservative Solutions PAC, which is supporting Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, $12.5 million came from just four donors, including Norman Braman, a billionaire auto dealer and longtime patron of Mr. Rubio, and the tech investor Larry Ellison.
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In the wake of the prosecution and subsequent suicide of Aaron Swartz, lawmakers have proposed to amend the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Representative Zoe Lofgren has drafted a bill that would help "prevent what happened to Aaron from happening to other Internet users".[40] Aaron's Law (H.R. 2454, S. 1196[41]) would exclude terms of service violations from the 1984 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and from the wire fraud statute, despite the fact that Swartz was not prosecuted based on Terms of Service violations.[42]^
In addition to Lofgren, Representative Darrell Issa and Representative Jared Polis—all on the House Judiciary Committee, raised questions about the government's handling of the case. Polis called the charges "ridiculous and trumped up," while referring to Swartz as a "martyr."[43] Issa, also chair of the House Oversight Committee, announced that he is investigating the actions of the Justice Department's prosecution.[43][44]^
As of May 2014, Aaron's Law was stalled in committee, reportedly due to tech company Oracle's financial interests.[45]^
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Also at 11 a.m. that Saturday, Paul Hall (Merrill '72) will moderate an interdisciplinary panel of distinguished alumni who will take a close look at the interplay of money and power in political and governing systems; from campaign finance and the effect of money in politics to legal and political responses to global warming and climate change. The presentation, "Money, Politics, Climate Change and the Law: Will We Rise to the Challenge?" takes place at the Stevenson Fireside Lounge at Stevenson College.
Panelists include: Mary Doyle (Porter, '74), former vice president, legal and global chief compliance and ethics officer at Oracle;
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1. Larry Ellison: An Awesome Arrogance
Drum roll, please. Our 2013 greediest of them all: Larry Ellison, the longtime chief exec at business software kingpin Oracle.
Ellison currently owns a quarter of Oracle, a chunk that makes the 69-year-old the ninth richest individual in the world. His total net worth sat last week at $38.6 billion.
Enough? Not for Ellison. Last year, the software kingpin had Oracle award him$96.2 million in compensation.Unhappy shareholders considered those millions a tad excessive. In a nonbinding 2012 say-on-pay vote, an Oracle shareholder majority turned thumbs-down on Ellison’s pay package.
Ellison, of course, gave none of that $96.2 million back. This year, he had Oracle hand him another $76.9 million [49]. Unhappy shareholders again expressed their displeasure, making Oraclejust the 12th company [50] in U.S. corporate history to have its shareholders go on record against their CEO’s pay in consecutive years.
No frustrated shareholder better try getting any of Ellison’s latest paycheck back. Oraclespends $1.5 million [51] a year on security personnel to protect him. And why not? Ellison, as Oracle general counsel Dorian Daley gushes [52], rates as Oracle’s “most critical strategic visionary.”
Ellison pays dearly to surround himself with such fawning adulation. His two top executive underlings collected [49] $43.6 million each in compensation in Oracle’s fiscal 2013.
Ellison’s billions, to be sure, buy him more than office sycophants. This past year Ellison hosted global yachting’s premiere race, the America’s Cup, in San Francisco Bay. Each race’s host sets the race’s rules. Ellison’s rules [53] limited the field to ultra-expensive — and ultra-dangerous — catamarans.
One sailor died in training runs for the race.
Whose yacht eventually won [54]? Guess.
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2014 |
Imagine yourself part of the typical American family. Your household would have, the Federal Reserve reported last month, a net worth of $81,200.
Not much. But 50 percent of America’s households would actually have less wealth than you do. The other half would have more.
Now imagine that your net worth suddenly quadrupled to about $325,000. That sum would place you within the ranks of America’s most affluent 20 percent of income earners. You would be “typical” no more. On the other hand, you still wouldn’t be rich, or even close to grand fortune.
So suppose we quadrupledyour wealth still again, enough to get your net worth — your assets minus your debts — all the way up to $1.3 million.
Congratulations. You now hold 16 times more wealth than the typical American. You probably have paid off your mortgage. You have a healthy balance in your 401(k). You have investment income. You have it made.
But not really. You still have to worry financially, about everything from losing your job to helping your kids with their college tuition.
So let’s quadruple your net worth once again — to $5.2 million.
You now sit comfortably within the ranks of America’s richest 1 percent. You can afford, well, just about anything you want. A getaway in the mountains, another getaway on the shore. Two beamers in the driveway. Impressive philanthropic gestures. Direct access to your U.S. senators.
Enough already? Actually, no. With a fortune of just $5.2 million, you still have to put up with the inconveniences of mere mortal existence. Yes, you can fly first class anywhere you want. But you have to fly with the great unwashed back in coach — and they take forever getting their carry-ons up in those overhead bins.
You need relief. We’re going to give it to you. We’re going to multiply your $5.2 million fortune 1,000 times over — to $5.2 billion. Now you can buy your own private jet.
Even better, now you get your name printed in the annual Forbes magazine list of America’s 400 richest. At $5.2 billion, your fortune would nearly rate as an average Forbes 400 stash. America’s top 400, Forbes revealed last week, now hold a combined net worth of $2.29 trillion. That places the average Forbes 400 fortune at $5.7 billion, an all-time record high.
Remember back when you held that median American nest-egg of $81,200? The average member of the Forbes 400 holds a fortune over 70,000 times that size.
And the richest of these 400 hold far more than that average. Take Larry Ellison, the third-ranking deep pocket on this year’s Forbes list. Ellison just stepped down as the CEO of the Oracle business software colossus. His net worth: $50 billion.
What does Ellison do with all those billions? He collects homes and estates, for starters, with 15 or so scattered all around the world. Ellison likes yachts, too. He currently has two extremely big ones, each over half as long as a football field.
Ellison also likes to play basketball, even on his yachts. If a ball bounces over the railing, no problem. Ellison has a powerboat following his yacht, the Wall Street Journal noted this past spring, “to retrieve balls that go overboard.”
Hiring that ball-retriever qualifies Ellison a “job creator,” right? Maybe not.Ellison has regularly destroyed jobs on his way to grand fortune. He has become, over the years, a master of the merge-and-purge two-step: First you snatch your rival’s customers, then you fire its workers.
In 2005, for instance, Ellison shelled out $10.6 billion to buy out PeopleSoft, an 11,000-employee competitor. He then proceeded to put the axto 5,000 jobs .
Five years later, Ellison bought out Sun Microsystems and indignantly denied that any “massive layoff” would be in the offing. Five months later, Ellison’s Oracle quietly acknowledged a major downsizing in an official federal regulatory filing.
Job massacres like these been hollowing out America’s middle class ever since Forbes started annually identifying the nation’s richest 400 back in the 1980s. Since 1989, Federal Reserve figures show, the median net worth of families in America’s statistical middle class — the middle 20 percent of income earners — has dropped from $75,300 to $61,700, after taking inflation into account.
This year, for the first time ever, Forbes has assigned a “self-made score” to every one of America’s richest 400. More than two-thirds of this year’s 400, Forbes claims, rate as “self-made,” Ellison among them.
Forbes doesn’t bother asking how those rich went about self-making their fortunes. We should. Our top 400, after all, haven’t just made monstrously large fortunes. They’ve made a monstrously large mess. To unmake it, we need to unmake them.
alternet
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