"In 2020, only a tiny fraction of Americans got news from TikTok. These days, that number has soared to one in five. For young adults, those figures are much higher, with almost half of adults under 30 getting news there, according to the Pew Research Center. But who will own that hugely influential purveyor of information? As with so much of American media from television networks to some of the largest newspapers the answer is shaping up to be as simple and short as a"
"TikTok video: the ultra-rich. As President Trump moved this week to clear the path to sell the platform's US assets to a group of American investors, the metastasizing reality of media-by-oligarchy threatened to become even more extreme. One of those investors is the billionaire and Trump donor Larry Ellison, whose son's media company owns CBS News and is reportedly planning a bid for Warner Bros Discovery, which in turn owns CNN. Another reportedly is Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, with rightwing bona well-known"
"through their control of Fox News. The former US labor secretary Robert Reich described the situation plainly, writing this week on the platform formerly known as Twitter: The richest man on earth owns X. The second richest man on earth is about to be a major owner of TikTok. The third richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The fourth richest man owns the Washington Post. He was talking, of course, about Musk, Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos. We've already seen some of"
"what happens when billionaires control the media and remain committed to getting even richer and more powerful. Bezos has dramatically turned the Washington Post opinion section to the right, as he curries favor with Trump. The Amazon co-founder killed a draft endorsement of Kamala Harris last fall, and later installed an opinion editor who has driven out some of the Post's most esteemed journalists. Another newspaper-owning billionaire, Patrick Soon-Shiong, has changed the tenor of the opinio"
TikTok's use as a news source jumped from a tiny fraction in 2020 to one in five Americans, and nearly half of adults under 30 rely on it. Control of TikTok's US assets is moving toward extremely wealthy American investors as political actions facilitate a sale. Billionaires linked to legacy media, including Larry Ellison and Rupert Murdoch, are poised to gain ownership of major outlets such as CBS News and CNN, further concentrating media power. Existing billionaire ownership has already shifted editorial directions at prominent outlets, affecting endorsements, staffing, and opinion pages.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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