News-Who Controls America

This was created by Andrew Sterling Ansley to show how unfree the American media is. Don't believe what you hear. Thank you ASA. To find out more about ASA check the internet.

Information that controls your life is controlled by a few individuals in a few companies. According to Harvard’s Future of Media Project, seven companies now own more than half the major daily newspapers in America.

Local reporting is vanishing. What replaces it is national content wearing a local masthead. According to Harvard’s Future of Media Project, seven companies now own more than half the major daily newspapers in America.

Local reporting is vanishing. What replaces it is national content wearing a local masthead. Who is telling YOU the news YOU rely on?

CNN

Owned by Warner Bros. Connected with:DC Comics

• Discovery Channel,
• HGTV, 
• the Food Network
• multiple film studios.

Largest institutional shareholders: 

• Vanguard (10%), 
• BlackRock (6.3%)
• State Street (5.5%)

Censorship? In 2011, CNN sent reporter Amber Lyon and a crew to Bahrain to covered the Arab Spring. They filmed:

• Government forces shooting unarmed demonstrators
• Interviewed torture victims
• Detained at gunpoint 

The resulting documentary, iRevolution, won a Gold Medal at the New York Festivals. 

• CNN aired it once domestically. 
• CNN International, the most-watched English news outlet in the Middle East, never aired it. Not once. Meanwhile, CNN International was running paid content produced for the Bahrain Economic Development Board, chaired by the Crown Prince, casting the regime as pro-democracy reformers. 

What happened next:

• Lyon went public about the suppression and was laid off in 2012
• CNN threatened to terminate her severance and benefits if she ever spoke about it again. The Bahraini government paid CNN.
• CNN killed the documentary that made the Bahraini government look bad. CNN confirmed the payments were for “advertising.”

FOX NEWS

Owned by Fox Corporation.

Controlled by the Murdoch family through a dual-class share structure giving them roughly 42% of voting power.

• Fox Corporation also owns 
• Fox Sports
• Fox Business
• 28 local TV stations.

The Murdoch family also controls a separate company, News Corp, which owns the: 

• Wall Street Journal
• New York Post
• Barron’s
• MarketWatch
• HarperCollins
• Major newspapers in Australia and the UK.
• One family controls both the most-watched cable news channel in America and one of its most respected financial newspapers.

Largest institutional shareholders of Fox Corporation after the Murdochs: 

• Vanguard (6.4%)
• BlackRock (5.4%), 
• Dodge and Cox (4.8%).

In 2023, Fox News paid $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems. Internal communications revealed during the case showed that Fox hosts and executives privately acknowledged the election fraud claims they were broadcasting were false. Rupert Murdoch testified under oath that some Fox hosts had endorsed the false claims. The network aired them anyway. The business logic was straightforward: the audience wanted to hear it, and ratings drove revenue. Fox chose profit over accuracy, with internal documentation proving the network’s leadership knew exactly what it was doing.

MSNBC

Was owned by NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast, the largest cable and broadband provider in the country.

In January 2026, Comcast spun MSNBC and other cable properties into Versant Media, rebranded as MS Now, still controlled by Comcast’s Roberts family.

Largest institutional shareholders of Comcast: 

• Vanguard (9.5%)
• BlackRock (7.5%)
• State Street (4%)
• Three cable news channels. Three supposedly different worldviews. The same three asset managers are among the top shareholders of all three parent companies.

In 2003, MSNBC fired the highest rated program Phil Donahue.  A leaked internal MSNBC claimed Donahue was “a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war” and that his show could become “a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.” 

Donahue was the only major cable news host opposing the Iraq invasion and was required to book two conservative guests for every liberal.. 

At the time, MSNBC was co-owned by General Electric, one of the largest defense contractors in the country. GE made enormous profits from the war Donahue was questioning. 

Three weeks after Donahue was fired, the invasion began.

ABC NEWS

Owned by The Walt Disney Company.

Disney also owns: 

• ESPN
• Hulu
• FX
• Pixar
• Marvel
• Lucasfilm
• 20th Century Studios
• National Geographic
•  Disney

Largest institutional shareholders: 

• Vanguard
• BlackRock
• State Street

In 2019, ABC anchor Amy Robach was caught on a hot mic saying the network had killed her story on Jeffrey Epstein three years earlier. She said she had an interview with accuser Virginia Giuffre, photographs, and corroborating evidence. She said the network was told “who’s Jeffrey Epstein, no one knows who that is, this is a stupid story.” She said Buckingham Palace threatened ABC “a million different ways” over allegations about Prince Andrew, and the network was afraid of losing access to interview Prince William and Kate Middleton. The story sat on a shelf for three years. It could have been public in 2015. Epstein wasn’t arrested again until 2019. He died in jail that August.

ABC said the reporting didn’t meet their editorial standards.

NBC NEWS

Owned by NBCUniversal. Owned by Comcast, the largest broadband and cable provider in the United States.

Largest institutional shareholders: 

• Vanguard (9.5%)
• BlackRock (7.5%)
• State Street (4%)

In 2017, reporter Ronan Farrow spent eight months investigating Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault of women for NBC News. He had on-camera interviews. He had a secretly recorded audio tape of Weinstein admitting to groping a woman.

Farrow and his producer were ordered to stop reporting. Farrow took the story to the New Yorker.  and won the Pulitzer Prize. 

CBS NEWS

Became part of Paramount Skydance in 2025.

• Skydance is led by David Ellison, son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.
• Oracle is one of the largest government technology contractors in the world. 
• The Ellisons are major political donors. 
• Both are vocal supporters of Donald Trump and have publicly pledged to use their influence to advance his agenda.

When CBS covers government tech contracts, AI regulation, or political campaigns the Ellisons support, the network’s owner has skin in the game.

After Skydance completed its acquisition, CBS News underwent rapid editorial and staffing changes.

Three broadcast networks. Three nightly newscasts watched by millions. Every single one is a subsidiary of a corporation whose primary business is something other than journalism.

THE WASHINGTON POST

Owned by Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon. Net worth: roughly $200 billion.

• Amazon Web Services holds billions in cloud computing contracts with the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA. Amazon is one of the largest government contractors in the country, one of the largest employers in the country, and the target of ongoing antitrust and labor investigations.
• In 2024, the Post declined to endorse a presidential candidate for the first time in decades. The decision triggered roughly 250,000 subscription cancellations and public criticism from the paper’s own journalists. 
• Multiple reports indicated the decision came from Bezos himself.

When the Post covers government contracting, tech monopolies, warehouse labor conditions, or antitrust enforcement, the man who owns the paper is on the other side of every one of those stories.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Owned by News Corp. Controlled by the Murdoch family.

It's the most-watched conservative cable channel. One of the most respected financial newspapers in the world. 

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Controlled by the Ochs-Sulzberger family since 1896. The family maintains control through a trust and dual-class shares.

• The Times is the most-visited news website in the country, roughly 5.5 billion visits over a recent twelve-month period.
• Among major outlets, the Times is the closest to independently owned. But it is still a publicly traded company, responsive to advertiser revenue and the preferences of its increasingly national subscriber base. Independence is relative.

SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

• Owns or operates roughly 185 to 193 television stations in over 100 markets. 
• Covers more than 40% of American households. 
• Largest owner of local stations affiliated with Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC, and The CW.
• In 2018, dozens of Sinclair anchors across the country were recorded reading an identical script, word for word, warning about “false news.” The script was written by corporate headquarters in Maryland and distributed to every station. Your local anchor. Your city. Words written in a boardroom a thousand miles away.
• Sinclair is widely documented for requiring its local stations to air centrally produced commentary segments with a conservative editorial slant.
• Controlled by the Smith family through a dual-class share structure.

NEXSTAR MEDIA GROUP

• Owns 200 stations.
• Owns News Nation, a cable news network
• Owns The Hill, a political news outlet.

Largest institutional shareholders: 

• Vanguard, 
• BlackRock
• State Street

GANNETT (NOW USA TODAY CO.)

Largest newspaper publisher in America. 

Owns USA Today and over 200 daily newspapers in 44 states.

Since its 2019 merger with GateHouse Media, Gannett has cut roughly half its workforce, from about 25,000 to roughly 11,000. 

In 2024, it dropped the Associated Press wire service to save money.

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

Owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong. Net worth: roughly $7 billion. Biotech billionaire. His companies require FDA approvals.

In 2024, Soon-Shiong blocked his editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris after the endorsement had already been drafted. The editorials editor resigned in protest. Two more editorial board members resigned. Over 20,000 subscribers canceled.

Soon-Shiong then announced plans to remake the editorial board, hired a conservative CNN commentator, and proposed an AI-powered “bias meter” to flag the bias of his own reporters. 

He has praised Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on social media. 

A columnist alleged the paper killed an op-ed critical of Kennedy.

In 2020, Soon-Shiong had also blocked the editorial board from endorsing Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic primary.

By early 2025, the paper’s entire editorial board had resigned or taken buyouts. Soon-Shiong made his fortune in pharmaceuticals. He needs regulatory goodwill from whoever is in power. Draw your own conclusions.

BLOOMBERG NEWS

Owned by Bloomberg LP. Bloomberg LP is owned by Michael Bloomberg. Net worth: roughly $109 billion.

Bloomberg ran for president in 2020. During his campaign, Bloomberg News announced it would not investigate Bloomberg or any Democratic primary candidates. It would only investigate the Trump administration. After the campaign ended, the policy was loosely reversed, but Bloomberg News has never had a mandate to aggressively cover its own owner’s business empire, political activities, or philanthropic influence. 

The editor-in-chief reports to a billionaire who was recently a presidential candidate, is one of the largest political donors in the country, and runs a financial data empire whose clients include every major bank and hedge fund in the world.

POLITICO AND BUSINESS INSIDER

Owned by Axel Springer, a German media conglomerate.

I

n 2021, private equity firm KKR took Axel Springer private in a deal worth roughly $6.8 billion.

KKR is one of the largest private equity firms in the world. Former CIA Director David Petraeus is a partner at KKR. Axel Springer also owns Bild and Die Welt, Germany’s most influential tabloid and one of its major broadsheets.

America’s most-read political news website is owned by a German company that was taken private by a firm where a former CIA director works.

THE ATLANTIC

Owned by Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Net worth: over $10 billion.

Powell Jobs also has investments in Axios and has funded ProPublica.

Her fortune derives primarily from inherited stakes in Apple and Disney. When The Atlantic covers tech regulation, Apple policy, or Disney’s business, the owner’s financial interests are in the room.

THE BOSTON GLOBE

Owned by John Henry. Henry also owns the Boston Red Sox, Liverpool F.C., and other sports properties.

When the Globe covers stadium deals, public funding for sports, labor disputes involving athletes, or Boston city politics involving real estate his businesses touch, the owner has interests beyond journalism.

REUTERS

Owned by Thomson Reuters. The Thomson family of Canada holds a controlling stake. Net worth of the Thomson family: roughly $70 billion.

Thomson Reuters is also one of the largest legal and financial data companies in the world, selling services to law firms, banks, and governments.

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, ORLANDO SENTINEL, AND OTHERS

Owned by Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund based in Manhattan.

Alden is the second-largest newspaper owner in the United States. It owns roughly 200 newspapers and publications.

Alden’s model: 

• Buy newspapers, many of which are still profitable
• Cut staff to the bone
• Sell the real estate
• Otsource layout to the Philippines
• Maximize short-term profit margins above 20%.
• According to the NewsGuild, Alden cut staff at union-represented papers by an average of 75%, twice the industry rate.

Alden is not a news company. It is a hedge fund that treats newspapers as distressed assets to strip for parts.

THE BALTIMORE SUN

Sold by Alden Global Capital in 2024 to David D. Smith, executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group, the same company that distributed identical scripts to local anchors nationwide.

TIME MAGAZINE

Owned by Marc Benioff, co-founder and CEO of Salesforce. Benioff bought Time in 2018 for $190 million. Salesforce is one of the largest enterprise software companies in the world and a major government contractor.

Now connect the dots.

Not a single major cable news channel is owned by a journalist or a news organization. They are owned by entertainment conglomerates, telecom monopolies, and billionaire families.

Not a single broadcast network news division is independent. Each one is a subsidiary of a corporation whose primary business is something other than journalism. Theme parks. Broadband. Government tech contracts.