Elon Musk’s $44bn takeover of Twitter is a “chilling development” in billionaires’ desire to increase their political influence by buying up many of the world’s largest and most influential media brands, a leading British analyst has warned.
Claire Enders, founder of Enders Analysis, said the super-rich have long sought to buy newspapers to help push their agendas and it was now possible to “count on one hand the big media brands that aren’t owned by an oligarch or other billionaire”.
“It’s another sign that the super-wealthy wish to control assets that give them an extra level of power,” she said. “Whatever they may say, that’s the reason why they buy them.
“It is now unusual for major news media not to be owned by a billionaire, and that is why the Guardian [owned by the independent Scott Trust], the Financial Times [owned by the employee-owned Japanese media group Nikkei] and the BBC are consistently shown to be the most trusted news brands.”
The billionaires who now control vast swathes of the media landscape include: » | Rupert Neate, Wealth correspondent | Tuesday, May 3, 2022
