Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt: the names of American billionaires who became famous in the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. They grew their fortunes through the consolidation of major industries such as oil, steel, and railroads. In the present, billionaires are making their fortune through the consolidation of the media industries. Names such as Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Murdoch have become the modern-day replacements for the likes of Rockefeller and Carnegie. The latest to do so are the father-and-son duo Larry and David Ellison.
Currently the second-richest man in the world, Larry Ellison co-founded Oracle, a data management and, later, a cloud computing software company, in 1977. Oracle’s software stores, organizes, and then analyzes massive quantities of information, from financial transactions and healthcare records to airline bookings and even government systems. With its 2016 expansion into cloud computing, Oracle now offers services that allow organizations to process and access their data remotely. Its clients include corporate behemoths such as the streaming service Netflix and the clothing chain Nike.
Larry Ellison’s son, David Ellison, has made a name for himself in his own right, although his father still holds the purse strings. With financial backing from his father, David founded the production company Skydance, the studio behind Top Gun: Maverick and the Mission Impossible series, in 2010. In 2025, he orchestrated the Paramount–Skydance merger, which sparked controversy following Paramount’s $16 million settlement with Trump and the firing of Stephen Colbert. The merger allowed David to gain control of one of the nation’s largest media conglomerates, with the takeover encompassing CBS, BET, Nickelodeon, Paramount+, and the UK’s Channel 5, as well as over 28 local television stations. Now, David has declared that he has his sights set on acquiring Warner Bros next, a purchase that would land him control over CNN, HBO Max, DC Comics, and Cartoon Network. He is confident in his ability to eventually pull off the deal, as his father’s money and budding friendship with President Trump have removed major obstacles from his path.
The pair’s partisan and business ties to President Trump are no secret. Larry Ellison has been an outspoken supporter and longtime donor to President Trump since 2016. Most recently, a series of executive orders and negotiations between TikTok’s Chinese-owned parent company and President Trump will grant Oracle ownership over 15 percent of TikTok’s new U.S. business. Additionally, Oracle will continue to have control over TikTok’s security and data operations, dictating what appears in a user’s algorithm, determining which content is promoted and which content is subject to removal or censorship on the platform.
In the age of artificial intelligence, Oracle and Larry Ellison’s growing control over TikTok’s data infrastructure has implications far beyond content moderation. The same “Ellison-moderated” content that will be used to fuel TikTok’s new algorithm now has an additional concern: it will be used to train the AI systems of the future. The control the Ellisons have over TikTok’s algorithm will determine what output appears on their platforms. Then, through a process called “data scraping,” this output (posts, images, comments, likes, and user behavior) will be extracted by AI companies to develop and refine the behavior of their large language models (LLMs). Therefore, the politicization of the data sets AI is trained on will embed biases into models’ future behavior, shaping how they interpret and generate information. With Larry now at the helm of TikTok at the behest of President Trump, he has amassed the technological and political power to direct the next generation of AI.
David Ellison’s ties to Trump are evident in his recent business dealings. Traditionally, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has held strong to its anti-monopoly values, and the steps David would have needed to undertake to acquire a media company of Paramount’s size would have been insurmountable to any other administration. Under the Communications Act of 1934, which created the FCC, the agency was tasked with upholding “public interest” in its regulation of broadcasters, ensuring that broadcasters are serving the needs of democracy by providing citizens with a variety of perspectives and information sources. Subsequent court decisions throughout the 1940s affirmed that the FCC could enforce antitrust principles under the public interest standard, decreeing that information and communications monopolies were not only an economic concern but a threat to democratic discourse.
However, under Trump and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr (a Trump appointee), a few acts of political favoritism were enough to hasten the FCC’s approval of David’s merger. This allowed Ellison to pull off one of the biggest media consolidations in recent history and overturn decades of antitrust precedent.
In the months leading up to the merger, Paramount agreed to pay a $16 million settlement to Trump in response to accusations that a 60 Minutes interview with former vice president Kamala Harris was deceptively edited to harm his presidential campaign and favor Harris.
This settlement became a subject of ridicule on Stephen Colbert’s late-night show, which was canceled in July, shortly after he condemned Paramount’s decision to settle, calling it a “big, fat, bribe.” Although CBS claimed financial losses for the cancellation, many speculate that Colbert’s cancellation was actually a condition the FCC imposed on the merger, given both Trump’s legal settlement with Paramount and his dislike for Colbert. Since the merger, which encompassed CBS News and more, developments such as Bari Weiss’ appointment to become editor-in-chief of CBS News suggest that Ellison’s influence is reshaping Paramount and CBS’s editorial direction.
The founder of The Free Press, Weiss became well known for her unbending support for Israel and her criticism of “woke politics.” In an October 31 60 Minutes interview with CBS, Trump praised Weiss as a “great new leader.” This comment was part of an unbroadcast portion of the interview, as only 28 minutes of the 73-minute conversation were aired. In another unbroadcast portion of the interview, Trump praised the Ellisons, the very duo he allowed to take ownership of Paramount via the FCC: “I think one of the best things to happen is this show and the new ownership… it’s the greatest thing that’s happened in a long time for a free and open and good press,” Trump said, inadvertently patting himself on the back for the media takeover he orchestrated.
This pattern of mergers and backroom agreements suggests that Trump and the Ellisons exist in a symbiotic relationship. He approves their rapid accumulation of major media companies and their influence over platforms such as TikTok — acts that teeter on violating antitrust laws — and, in turn, they agree to promote content that aligns with Trump’s messaging while suppressing any dissent. This strategy mirrors that of Trump’s proclaimed friend Viktor Orbán, the authoritarian prime minister of Hungary.
In Hungary, the Orbán government pressured media conglomerates to sell to regime-aligned oligarchs, with estimates that Orbán’s party now has roughly 80 percent control over Hungary’s media market. This allowed him to shape public perception and legitimize his policies, enabling his consolidation of power. Per Orbán’s 2022 suggestion to Republicans, the Ellisons seem to be deploying a similar strategy in America. To an audience of right-wingers at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Orbán declared that media influence was the key to his administration’s success in overruling Hungarian democracy, stating, “Have your own media. It’s the only way to point out the insanity of the progressive left.” As the oligarchs of America, the Ellisons appear to be doing just that, gobbling up as many media outlets as they can while placating President Trump and his policies.
The danger of media consolidation, especially along partisan lines, is that it undermines democracy by manipulating the content American citizens receive. Incidents such as the Colbert debacle are just the beginning, signaling a future where dissenting voices are increasingly marginalized in favor of partisan messaging. As the Ellisons expand their media footprint across traditional (and now, digital) platforms, the risk is not just monopolization, but the collapse of a truly pluralistic media. Without a recommitment to antitrust principles, the vacuuming up of media companies by billionaires such as the Ellisons threatens to homogenize America’s information landscape by ridding it of any potential subversiveness, ultimately making it less democratic.
Featured Image Source: The New Republic
