|
|
Meyerson on TAP |
Ellisons tap Saudis to fund news media takeover
|
If the Saudi crown prince owns a piece of CNN and CBS News, how will they cover No Kings Days?
|
The list of CEOs who donned black tie to attend President Trump’s White House dinner for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday night is in no way surprising. The tech company oligarchs were there in flocks (Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Jensen Huang), as were the leaders of Blackstone, Citigroup, GM, and Ford, all of whom have either sought Saudi capital for one reason or another, or want to market their product in Saudi Arabia and its Middle Eastern allies.
Also in attendance, suitably duded up, was new Paramount CEO David Ellison, who now controls not only Hollywood’s oldest studio and CBS, but is contesting with Comcast and Netflix to see which of them will buy Warner Bros., whose many properties include CNN. His attendance came one day after the story broke that Ellison has met with leaders of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund to persuade them to chip in on his offer to buy Warners, as the bidding war grows steadily more costly. Ellison’s people denied such an effort was under way, but TheWrap reported yesterday that not only
is his offer to the Saudis under way, but that he’s made similar offers to the sovereign wealth funds of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. TheWrap further reported that these offers were due less to Ellison’s need for more funding—his father is the fourth-richest human on the planet—and more to Ellison’s desire to impress Trump, whose own family financial fortunes are increasingly linked to bin Salman’s and other Middle Eastern oilster oligarchs. (CNN reports that Papa Ellison has discussed with Trump how Paramount will axe CNN hosts whom Trump doesn’t like if the deal goes through.)
I would have thought that Ellison had already gone out of his way to impress Trump, chiefly by turning CBS News over to right-wing polemicist Bari Weiss, though if Ellison believes that Trump’s need for praise (albeit manufactured) and wealth acquisition (albeit corrupt) is insatiable, he’s probably right. Hence the efforts to cut the Saudis in on a deal that would make them minority owners of two major U.S. news giants.
|
|
|
|
|
|
In a dramatic break from our own nation’s laissez-faire norms, Trump has already compelled some major U.S. companies—U.S. Steel, Intel—to accept U.S. government ownership (de jure minority, de facto controlling). That has prompted cries of anguish—heresy! socialism!—from conservative economists, Wall Street Journal editorialists, and their peers (though they’ve spilled more ink over Zohran Mamdani’s pledge to establish five publicly owned grocery stores in a city of eight million people). Those of us on the left tend to be fine with judicious public ownership, but I see very few people on any part of the U.S. political spectrum who’ve supported the U.S. government taking ownership
of privately owned news organizations. Besides, thanks to Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, Trump has long had a major network at his beck and call, not least when his call has demanded lying on his behalf.
But has anyone ever favored the wealth fund of another country taking a stake in our country’s leading privately owned news outlets? Particularly when those other countries are the world’s last absolute monarchies? How would the Saudi crown prince like our media to cover the next round of No Kings Days?
But if Ellison thinks that bringing the Saudis in on the deal will endear himself to Trump even more, he’s onto something. It was bin Salman, after all, who ordered the murder of a Washington Post columnist who’d criticized the crown prince. Can there be even a scintilla of doubt that that’s just the kind of person Trump would like to own America’s news media?
|
|
|
|
|
