Private Ownership Turns Media Into a Destructive Weapon
This past June I wrote about the enormous danger that privately owned major media companies present. That since 2015 I had warned that a major source of influential media, like say Twitter, could be bought or controlled by owners with a conservative agenda, much like Fox news has been. Of course that’s exactly what eventually did happened in 2022 when Elon Musk bought Twitter, renamed it X, and turned it into a conservatively biased bullhorn favoring his views.
The renewed warning in June was that a new phase of that disaster could easily happen if owners with an agenda take over AI, being as it is rapidly becoming popularly adopted even by people with no technical inclination.
Well here we are four months later and already it’s time to sound the alarm about yet another part of the same disaster already happening. Conservative interests have control of, and are on track to gain much more control of, a wide range of other major media, from TikTok to CBS, from Paramount to Warner Brothers, to possibly CNN. In the past CNN has been something of a more factual counter-balance to Fox News.
Larry Ellison, among the top few richest people in the world, together with his son David, has an investment in the group that is intended to buy TikTok so it will have U.S. owners. They already have control of Paramount, which also has CBS under its umbrella. They are also working on controlling Warner Brothers/Discovery which has under its umbrella CNN and HBO. Ellison has been a major funder and supporter of Trump.
Back in 2015 only Fox News was a major conservative outlet willing to slant blatantly one direction with little regard for whether facts came along. That had already been a disaster for democracy. As the above plans take hold people with similar agendas will have Twitter/X, TikTok, CBS and CNN. Plus Musk has ownership of one of the leading popular AI companies, xAI. Also a factor is Mark Zuckerburg who runs Facebook and it’s associated companies such as Instagram and WhatsApp who seems willing to bend whichever way the wind blows and in recent times has been much more accommodating to conservative interests.
Humans were no good at resisting warped use of media when it was just radio and Hitler’s dazzling movies of his grand rallies tailored for visual impact. What chance is there for democracy to survive this overwhelming onslaught of media with a corrupt agenda?
As noted in those past pieces it is this private ownership that is the problem. These social media and mass media and AI platforms are not in themselves the problem. But when they can be owned and bent to the interests of one or a few with an agenda it is like giving a huge bully who can grab democracy by the throat and do what they want with it, giving them free rein to do so. The alternative is not about government ownership, but some aspect of public ownership or influence or control that prevents major media from bending to any one agenda.
CBS is already turning more conservative. That would be all right if it were just an editorial choice, if some outlets leaned more this way or that but stuck to facts and presented their view fairly. The damage comes when disinformation and propaganda are used, as often on Fox, as more allowed recently on Facebook, as sometimes on X. That comes about by private, agenda-driven control. Or the damage is by choking information. Sinclair media owns a huge portion of TV stations in the country and will sometimes block what they don’t want regardless whether the local station managers or local residents would want.
Doctors and coroners have a phrase for when something would certainly cause death. They say it is “incompatible with life”. A ruptured aorta is “incompatible with life”. A liver fully succumbed to cirrhosis is “incompatible with life”. A people saturated with media warped by people with corrupt agendas is simply, and utterly, “incompatible with democracy”. And what is incompatible with democracy is in turn “incompatible with individual rights”. This cannot be mediated or minimized. It is a deadly condition. It can only be survived if wiser leadership is put in place and major media are somehow run again like public services that, above all, do not bend to any one agenda.
HELP US PROTECT OUR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND YOUR RIGHTS AS INDIVIDUALS
