This is more consolidation of US media under extremely pro-Israel ownership. I don't think this will work out as well as they hope (look at CBS -- Bari Weiss has driven it into the ground) but it's scary how much US media a foreign adversary now has direct editorial control over, including both "news" and "entertainment", including TikTok.
https://www.972mag.com/ellisons-paramount-tiktok-israel-medi...
I'm not pro-Israel by any means but foreign adversary is a bit much.
Do they have the US interests at heart? Or their own? I think the latter, almost certainly. That makes them adversarial from a game theory perspective at the very least.
They pushed us into an unwinnnable quagmire that is helping to destroy our global leadership position - like Grump himself, their effects are indistinguishable from what an adversary would do.
The U.S. cannot claim to be "pushed" into any war. The US chose to participate in this war and chooses to stay involved every single day since it started.
"The US" is not a singular entity making a deliberate explicit choice, right? Just as it makes sense to say that Grump dragged the US into this war, it also makes sense to say that Israel helped. Think joint responsibility, not severable.
Is it possible the next administration sues to break them up? Couldn't they also just launch endless investigations of the owners until they spun it off into its own thing
The next administration absolutely could, but that would require them to care more about about the well-being of the country than they do about themselves and the bribes and favors they could rake in if they don't. That's seems to be the fatal flaw in our system. Congress, the FTC, and the president need to willing to put the interests of the nation above the interests of corporations. Maybe I'll live to see that happen, but a lot of people have died waiting for it (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/The_Boss...) and it gets less likely all the time.
You can count on the corporate Dems to gnash their teeth and wring their hands and collect their paycheck.
Sadly that probably won't happen:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/paramount-merger-settlemen...
The article is a bit foolish.
Hypothetically California could have done something to prevent the merger. Then they [Paramount] leave California, as threatened, and then complete the merger.
The Federal government is the entity which needs to be the enforcer of antitrust. Otherwise major companies like these WILL pick and and leave the state blocking them. It's a 111 billion deal - this is worth moving states for the parties involved.
Okay. They should have called the bluff. It'd be better if the federal government did this, but that's not the world we live in right now.
Here's the issue: nothing stops them from leaving the state anyway after the deal is made. The concessions lack any weight. California folded potentially for nothing.
There is already a deep recession in the creative industry in LA, film jobs are down by a third since 2022. They’re not negotiating from a position of strength
I'm aware. There's a lot of FUD around this industry and a large corporation leaving wouldn't help.
At the same time, this promise to "support labor" falls flat when they have been actively combatting with it for recent years. Their words ring hollow.
And if we're being realistic: this is mostly Newsom trying to cover his tracks and look "strong" for 2028.
Let’s check where much of the ownership and money come from. From the LA Times:
> The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday granted Paramount Skydance’s request to allow Middle Eastern royal families to hold a substantial stake in a merged Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery.
> Foreign investors, including the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, are slated to indirectly own nearly 50% of the equity in David Ellison’s proposed mega-studio. That will give them a hefty stake in CBS, CNN, Comedy Central, HBO and two historic Hollywood film studios.
So foreign “adversaries” literally own enormous stakes in these companies and have been cleared by the FCC. Yet only possible pro-Israel influence by Ellison gets called out?
1: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20... 2: https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2026/04/15/qatar_is...
When they take dollars for oil, they would rather swap paper currency with real assets (ownership of firms). If US doesn't want that, they should make moves to remove USD as a reserve currency or preferred currency for global trade.
Naturally. Because OP isn't going to let pesky facts interfere with his narrative.
Out of those 3, one is a covert ally of Israel and the other is an overt ally. David and Larry Ellison are avowed Zionists.
Is Israel the main concern? They gave tens of millions to Trump. They are now Republican media.
Yeah, it's not great that the head of the corporation is so close with Netanyahu, but there are more immediate problems for the US. These corporations aren't ideological though, they'll just do whatever it takes to get what more of what they want. David Ellison and his daddy have both been more than happy to throw huge piles of money at Democrats and support them when they thought it was convenient. When Republicans are out of power they'll support whoever replaces them. When you have no morals whatsoever what difference is there in supporting a Democrat, or a genocide, or a Republican?
[flagged]
The shills always conveniently forget to mention AIPAC.
This is the worst deflection I’ve seen in this website and that’s saying a lot.
[flagged]
[flagged]
Consider me a politically ignorant folk who has heard Israel = Good his whole life, thought it was silly when recently people started hating on Israel, and has heard it long enough that he's wondering what he's been ignoring.
With that introduction, is there a quick sum up somewhere to get someone like me to understand why there's so much division on this topic? All I really know is that in the most recent stuff with Gaza, people think that Israel's actions are too much, but I would be lying if I claimed to know what any of those Middle East scurmishes are about.
This is a good starting point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba
Not a great starting point if you seek objectivity.
https://www.piratewires.com/p/how-wikipedia-s-pro-hamas-edit...
I gotta be honest, given the LLMs we have today, it takes less words to get a list of references and context to read than it takes to type out your comment.
If you're genuinely curious about why people's views on Israel have shifted you could've got yourself excellent information with a simple prompt as such:
"Give me a brief neutral summary backed with reliable sources on the state of tensions in the Middle East today and the role played by Israel and other states. Help me understand why people's views on Israel have shifted so much since the start of the war in Gaza?"
Note the Israeli training data scandal to influence AI responses. AI is not reliable for this purpose.
Keeping the other response in mind: I cannot think of a worse idea than to rely on black box tech for output on your political opinions. That on its surface simply feels like a top 3 dystopia cliche that I hope we avoid.
You've managed to work your favorite conspiracy into this completely unrelated conversation as well! Congrats!
It’s not a conspiracy. It’s well documented and easily evident. You can start by reading The Israel Lobby by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.
And working Israel into every conversation. What is that evidence of?
Larry Ellison owned Paramount Skydance.
He is the largest private donor to the IDF and literally vetted Marco Rubio for Israel, https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/larry-ellison-vetted-marco-ru...
And what's wrong with that?
I think it's great that the America supports Israel, whose values and interests basically align with the West, over the rest of the Middle East, Russia and China with their values, which being as diplomatic as possible, do not.
Just take a look at all the countries that are the most against Israel. They are a mixture of failed states, third world and what they all share in common is a distressing lack of regard for human rights. Both of other nationalities and their own. Europe is unfortunately going in that direction, and I believe it's no coincience that they are simultaneously becoming worse countries and more anti Israel. It's not causation but it is correlation.
> distressing lack of regard for human rights
The US couped, invaded, and destroyed tens of countries since WW2 until now. Israel is still massacring civilians in Gaza during a ceasefire and continuing their pogrom in the West Bank, killing people and stealing more lands. This is your example of human rights?
Yes. Your argument is fallacious because it's classic whataboutism. Just because the US have done some morally questionable things doesn't mean they are not committed to humanism in general and by comparison to all the other countries I've mentioned, they are so much better. And their trajectory over time is one of continued improvement.
As for your charges against Israel, they are factually incorrect. Israel is not still massacring civilians in Gaza, neither did they at any point engage in anything like a systemic, strategic program of killing civilians in Gaza. If you want to know what the casualty figures would look like if that was indeed the case, look at Iran which did do just that with the protests last year where they succeeded in murdering in one week roughly the amount of people Israel killed in Gaza in an entire year of active fighting. The worst you can accuse them of is of not doing enough to minimize civilian casualties. I will argue they did plenty but that's for another time. As for "progroms" in the West Bank, I would love to see what you're talking about. For your reference this is a wikipedia page on progroms[1] For some context, the number of extremist violent settlers that the whole world is fixated on numbers according to estimates in the dozens to hundreds.
Finally, I will leave it up to your imagination what it would look like if the roles were reversed, if the Arabs were dominant in Israel and the Jews were a minority, to help things along, here's examples from the wider Arab world[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogroms_in_the_Russian_Empire
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_...
Not sure what your values are, but mine don't include decades of apartheid followed by genocide.
Mine don't either.
Under what criteria exactly is Israel a "foreign adversary"...?
Have you been paying attention to american politics the last 15 years or so? It's become astoundingly clear that Mossad has blackmail material on virtually every major politician and uses it to get its way - including billions of dollars in funding and drawing the US into conflicts that do not benefit us and instead result in the deaths of Americans (and as of Trump's statement yesterday, the threat of bombings on American soil.)
[dead]
>but it's scary how much US media a foreign adversary now has direct editorial control over
It's not antisemitic to criticize Israel, but this language is verging on antisemitic because Israel very much does not have "direct editorial control" over Skydance. David Ellison is the one with "direct editorial control" and you can certainly say he's "extremely pro-Israel" but he himself is not "a foreign adversary" by any definition of those words. So either you're being hyperbolic with the meaning of "direct editorial control" or you're insinuating that David Ellison will defer to Israel on everything because he's Jewish which is a common antisemitic trope[1]. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the former, but the latter is enough of a possibility that I would suggest rephrasing this comment to avoid giving supporters of Israel a legitimate line of complaint against your underlying point.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_loyalty#Jews
What about his co-CEO, an ex-IDF soldier?
If you want to make an accusation, make an accusation. Do you think a specific person at the head of this company is "a foreign advisory"? Because the vagueness of an accusation can come across like a dog whistle. If you believe ethics and facts are on your side, what's the point of being vague?
Isn't technically every Israeli adult over a certain age ex-IDF? I had understood service to be compulsory for all citizens.
Yes, military service is compulsory in Israel so using "ex-IDF soldier" in this context does stick out because it isn't actually adding any new details. It gives the impression that the reason that language was chosen was that it implies something more nefarious than "Israeli" without the requirement of actually detailing what makes it nefarious.
The owners openly talk about Israel often and loudly.
Larry Ellison:
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/larry-ellison-vetted-marco-ru...
>Larry Ellison Vetted Marco Rubio for Fealty to Israel
Indeed Israeli media covers this also:
https://forward.com/fast-forward/853703/david-ellison-appoin...
>David Ellison appoints Israeli to lead merged Paramount-Warner studios
The same thing happened with the Tik Tok purchase, the entire point of handing control of the Tik Tok algorithm to Larry Ellison was so that they could clamp down on the discussion about the genocide in Gaza. You can see the results of it in the reports that the world Jewish congress put out directly:
>https://wjc-org-website.s3.amazonaws.com/horizon/assets/YNN3...
>TikTok is the exception, removing 64% of content overall (and 71% of content formally reported to it), compared to 12–15% on every other major platform.
It seems like you fully ignored my point, so I'll repeat myself:
>you can certainly say he's "extremely pro-Israel" but he himself is not "a foreign adversary" by any definition of those words.
All you're showing is that his family is pro-Israel, but that does not mean they are controlled by Israel. These conversations about Israel always seem to remove the agency on the American end which is where a lot of the historical antisemitic tropes live. Whether it's intentional or not, it's phrased in a way that evokes the trope of a shadowy cabal of Jews pulling the strings behind the scenes, and other countries rarely get talked about in this same way. For example, have you ever heard anyone suggest Google and Microsoft are controlled by India because their CEOs were born in India?
"controlled by Israel" is kind of impossible to prove and that was never anyone's argument. But it's very obvious that these people are placing ethnic affinity and the interests of a foreign nation above the United States. They are going out of their way to buy media to shape the discourse of this country in favor of a foreign nation and a specific ethnic group.
>other countries rarely get talked about in this same way
They actually do, but the Israeli lobby has grown so powerful that it is now dominating most of the political action in the USA in a way that has become impossible to ignore.
There are actually plenty of conversations to be had about Indian ethnic affinity and lobbying. USINPAC is the Indian lobbying organization which is actually modeled after AIPAC (the notorious Israeli lobbying group which has political control over most of the US congress).
https://www.trackaipac.com/
There is a looming argument which hasn't yet entered the public mainstream discourse about Indian foreign influence and Indian ethnic nepotism in the United States, but that is an entirely separate conversation.
Most Indian CEOs are the same caste (Brahmin) and there is a good argument that many of them have been nominated by the boards of their companies and institutional investors with large stakes so that they can navigate India's notorious bureaucracy and deepen ties to the country, which supplies much of the cheap labor for the tech industry. Many of them have direct ties to the Bharatiya Janata Party in India and can use the access to people like Modi to access more Indian labor as well as build more in India. Modi talks openly about exporting human capital and using its diaspora to wield influence in the United States. One can argue that they are taking a cue from Israel here.
>Narendra Modi urges the Indian diaspora to become an extension of foreign policy
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/02/narendra-modi-...
>"controlled by Israel"... was never anyone's argument.
Yes it was. My comment was directly in response to someone saying "it's scary how much US media a foreign adversary now has direct editorial control over". I know that was not your argument, but it was someone's argument and I responded to refute it. I don't know what point you thought was being discussed, but it's now clear you misread the conversation.
They put Bari Weiss in charge of CBS news. Her only credential is being rabidly zionist. This trait got her blog purchased for 100s of millions of dollars (!!) and then put her in charge of CBS news.
If you want to split hairs between "controlled by Israel" and "controlled by people who's sole interest is supporting Israel", go ahead.