'Last thing' we need: Inside this Trump ally's quest to build a new right-wing media empire

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.

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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.

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“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.”