1. United States
2. S.C.
3. Letter

Ultra-rich media owners are tightening their grip on democracy. It’s time to wrest our power back. The richest man on Earth owns X. The family of the second-richest man owns Paramount, which owns CBS, and could soon own Warner Bros, which owns CNN. The third-richest man owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The fourth-richest man owns the Washington Post and Amazon MGM Studios. Another billionaire owns Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. Why are the ultra-rich buying up so much of the media? Vanity may play a part, but there’s a more pragmatic – some might say sinister – reason. If you’re a multibillionaire, you might view democracy as a potential threat to your net worth. Control over a significant share of the dwindling number of media outlets would enable you to effectively hedge against democracy by suppressing criticism of you and other plutocrats, and discouraging any attempt to, for example, tax away your wealth. You also have Donald Trump to contend with. In his second term of office, Trump has brazenly and illegally used the power of the presidency to punish his enemies and reward those who lavish him with praise and profits. So perhaps it shouldn’t have been surprising that the editorial board of the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post defended the razing of the East Wing of the White House to build Trump his giant ballroom – without disclosing that Jeff Bezos-owned Amazon is a major corporate contributor to the ballroom’s funding. The Post’s editorial board also applauded Trump’s defense department’s decision to obtain a new generation of smaller nuclear reactors, but failed to mention Amazon’s stake in X-energy, a company that’s developing small nuclear reactors. And it criticized Washington DC’s refusal to accept self-driving cars without disclosing that Amazon’s self-driving car company was trying to get into the Washington DC market. This is only one example of one tech billionaire. If I was to go through all of the examples, this letter would be pages long. Aside from billionaires' motive due to personal and company gains, it is impossible to know the full extent to which criticism of Trump and his administration has been chilled by the media-owning billionaires, or what fawning coverage has been elicited. After all, some of them want government contracts approved (Mark Zuckerberg) while others need media licenses to be approved by agencies the government controls. Either way, tech billionaires are buying up media platforms and making us, our elections, and our country less safe by the day. It is time to break up big tech companies and pass agressive legislation to protect what we have access to online and through other media outlets. It is time to pass agressive legislation about tech companies allowing bots and mass disinformation, all while changing algorithms to manipulate what we see, hear, and believe. We have to get this right before its too late.