Larry Ellison co-founded Oracle, played a major role in the acquisition of TikTok, and was recently the world’s richest man. His son David now owns Paramount — parent company of Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and 60 Minutes — after an $8 billion merger Larry bankrolled with $6 billion of his own money.
The cost of entry into the media market can be described by one word: compliance.
In October 2024, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against CBS over their editing of a Kamala Harris interview. Nearly unanimously deemed meritless by legal experts, Paramount settled for $16 million donated to Trump’s presidential library. Why? The Ellisons needed their Skydance-Paramount merger approved. Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair suggested the agency should examine whether CBS engaged in “news distortion” when deciding whether to approve the deal. The signal was clear: pay up or the merger dies. Within weeks of settling, the FCC approved it.
The fallout was swift and public. A 37-year 60 Minutes veteran resigned, saying Paramount was “supervising content in new ways” to get the merger through. The president of CBS News resigned days later. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was cancelled after he called the settlement a “big fat bribe.” David Ellison’s newly appointed CBS editor-in-chief pulled a completed 60 Minutes documentary about Trump’s El Salvador deportation prison.
All of this unfolds as the family pursues yet another merger — Paramount-Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery — that would bring Cable News Network (CNN) under their umbrella and again requires Trump’s approval.
Meanwhile, Larry Ellison sits on Trump’s science and technology council and is a key partner in Stargate, the president’s $500 billion AI infrastructure initiative. Ellison describes his vision for AI-powered surveillance: “Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on.”
Legacy media and social platforms are being consolidated by an increasingly small number of tech elites deeply intertwined with the current administration – just look at the turnout of tech oligarchs at Trump’s inauguration. They’re buying the cameras in front of our eyes, and they aren’t even trying to hide it.