💲 Washington Post:

◾ Owned by Jeff Bezos:

Jeff Bezos era (2013–present)

In late September 2013, Jeff Bezos purchased The Washington Post and other local publications, websites, and real estate for US$250 million, transferring ownership to Nash Holdings LLC, Bezos’s private investment company. The paper’s former parent company, which retained some other assets such as Kaplan and a group of TV stations, was renamed Graham Holdings shortly after the sale.

Nash Holdings, which includes the Post, is operated separately from technology company Amazon, which Bezos founded and where he is as of 2022 executive chairman and the largest single shareholder, with 12.7% of voting rights.

◾ CEO and publisher is William ‘Will’ Lewis:

NPR did a great story about him.

‘Washington Post’ CEO tried to kill a story about himself. It wasn’t the first time

In December, I wrote the first comprehensive piece based on new documents cited in a London courtroom alleging that Lewis had helped cover up a scandal involving widespread criminal practices at media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloids. (Lewis has previously denied the allegations.)

At that time, Lewis had just been named publisher and CEO by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, but had not yet started. In several conversations, Lewis repeatedly — and heatedly —offered to give me an exclusive interview about the Post’s future, as long as I dropped the story about the allegations.

At that time, the same spokesperson, who works directly for Lewis from the U.K. and has advised him since his days at the Wall Street Journal, confirmed to me that an explicit offer was on the table: drop the story, get the interview.

Will Lewis Wikipedia (Note, they list him as a journalist, not the CEO he is)

🔷 National Public Radio (NPR)

◾ NPR is a membership organization. Member stations are required to be non-commercial or non-commercial educational radio stations; have at least five full-time professional employees; operate for at least 18 hours per day; and not be designed solely to further a religious broadcasting philosophy or be used for classroom distance learning programming. Each member station receives one vote at the annual NPR board meetings—exercised by its designated Authorized Station Representative (“A-Rep”).

Source

◾ CEO is Katherine Maher

Prior to joining NPR, Maher was CEO of Web Summit and served on its Board of Directors. She also worked for seven years as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, responsible for the success of Wikipedia, one of the world’s most popular digital platforms. She led Wikipedia to its highest brand trust since its founding, navigating the misinformation crisis and global trust decline in media, while doubling the Foundation’s fundraising and raising Wikimedia’s first endowment. Before Wikimedia, Maher worked on rights, democracy, and innovation at Access Now, the World Bank, the National Democratic Institute and UNICEF.

◾ Board of Directors

• Chairperson is Jennifer Ferro- serves as a Senior Fellow for the Luskin School of Public Policy at UCLA. She is on the board of Marfa Public Radio, one of the most innovative public stations in the country that serves rural west Texas. She is also a board member of the prestigious Trusteeship/International Women’s Forum for Southern California and Chair of the NPR Board. Ferro was awarded the UCLA Award for public service and selected as one of the 500 Most Influential People in LA according to the LA Business Journal.
• John McGinn -Was the head of Citigroup’s Global Consumer Risk Aggregation unit, Chief Risk Officer for Citi’s Student Loan Corporation and chief of staff for the Chief Risk Officers of both the Global Consumer Group and the Latin American Consumer Bank. Prior to his time at Citigroup, McGinn worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
• Milena Alberti-Perez-Alberti-Perez spent most of her career at Penguin Random House and currently serves on 2 non-profit boards and 3 corporate boards. She was most recently the Chief Financial Officer of Getty Images, Inc.
• Matthew Barzun-Matthew Barzun is a media entrepreneur, author, and former diplomat. He currently serves as chair and publisher of Tortoise Media, the London-based online news service he co-founded with the former Director of BBC News.Earlier in his career, he was closely involved in the pioneer stage of the internet publishing business, serving in executive roles at CNET.
• Scott Donaton-He most recently served as Hulu’s Head of Marketing, overseeing a team of 250 marketers responsible for marketing strategy, subscriber acquisition, engagement & retention, brand marketing, creative, social, paid media, partnerships and consumer insights & analytics.
• *LeRoy Kim-He is a Managing Director of Allen & Company LLC. He started his career at Lehman Brothers. Kim has served as a financial advisor to many well-known corporations in the fields of technology, media, sports, healthcare services and consumer products. Kim was formerly the President of the Board of The Door, which serves up to 11,000 youth annually across New York City and operates Broome Street Academy, a NYC charter high school, and was a founding Board member of Venture for America. He was a Board member of The Sleepy Hollow Country Club, and is currently on the Finance Committee of Board of The MidOcean Club.
• Joanna Lambert-Most recently, Lambert was President and General Manager of Yahoo Consumer. Prior to PayPal, Lambert was the Senior Vice President of Product Development and Operations at American Express.
• Catherine Levene-She was President of the Russian owned National Media Group at Meredith Corporation, where she oversaw the company’s 40+ iconic brands including PEOPLE, Allrecipes, Entertainment Weekly, InStyle, TRAVEL&LEISURE, REAL SIMPLE and Magnolia Journal.
• Judith Segura-She is a lead thermal architect and expert in thermodynamics at Apple, Inc. Prior to Apple, Segura also helped build innovative products at Cisco Systems and Spray Cool, Inc. A winner of the Ford Foundation doctoral fellowship, Segura has been awarded three patents across various disciplines with several more pending.
• Howard Wollner-For two years, Wollner served as Senior Vice President Strategic Business Systems for Starbucks Coffee International.
• Neal Zuckerman-He is a Senior Partner and Managing Director in the New York office of the global management consulting firm Boston Consulting Group. He is also the head of the firm’s Media Practice globally.

Source

💲 FOX News

(not a real news source but the most watched news on cable so it should be here)

◾ Owned by The Murdoch Family

it was formed on March 19, 2019 as the portion of 21st Century Fox not acquired by The Walt Disney Company on March 20, 2019. The company is controlled by the Murdoch family via a family trust with 39.6% ownership share, and by Rupert Murdoch himself to the effect of almost 40%.

McKnight (2010) identifies four characteristics of his media operations: free market ideology; unified positions on matters of public policy; global editorial meetings; and opposition to liberal bias in other public media.

Source

◾ Rupert Murdoch is chair, while his son Lachlan Murdoch is executive chair and CEO.

Murdoch made his first acquisition in the United States in 1973, when he purchased the San Antonio Express-News. In 1974, Murdoch moved to New York City, to expand into the US market; however, he retained interests in Australia and Britain. Soon afterwards, he founded Star, a supermarket tabloid, and in 1976, he purchased the New York Post. On 4 September 1985, Murdoch became a naturalized citizen to satisfy the legal requirement that only US citizens were permitted to own US television stations.

According to The New York Times, Ronald Reagan’s campaign team credited Murdoch and the Post for his victory in New York in the 1980 United States presidential election. Reagan later “waived a prohibition against owning a television station and a newspaper in the same market,” allowing Murdoch to continue to control The New York Post and The Boston Herald while expanding into television. In September 2021, Fox Corporation acquired TMZ from WarnerMedia in a deal worth about $50 million with TMZ being operated under the Fox Entertainment division

In March 2014, Murdoch was appointed as non-executive co-chairman of News Corp. and 21st Century Fox Inc. in a move that was seen as succession planning for the media empire.[41][42][43][44][45][46] Murdoch stood aside as chairman and a Director of Ten Network Holdings.[47] In June 2015 he was named as Executive Chairman of 21st Century Fox.

In 2021, Lachlan Murdoch and his father Rupert were the defendants in a $1.6 billion lawsuit, filed by voting machine maker Dominion Voting Systems, for knowingly and maliciously spreading false accusations that Dominion committed election fraud. Dominion claimed, in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s loss of the 2020 presidential election, that Fox News began to lose viewership, and was negatively impacted, as President Trump criticised Fox News and bolstered competitors that would spread his accusations of fraud. Dominion continued that, under the direction of Lachlan Murdoch, Fox News then made unsubstantiated accusations of fraud against Dominion, and intentionally invited guests that Fox News’ hosts knew were making false and defamatory statements, while the hosts endorsed, repeated, and amplified statements they knew to be defamatory and false.

Source Source 2

💲 Reuters

◾ Owned by the Thomson family, the wealthiest family in Canada.

Canadian multinational information conglomerate. The company was founded in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and maintains its headquarters at 19 Duncan Street there.

Thomson Reuters was created by the Thomson Corporation’s purchase of the British company Reuters Group on 17 April 2008. It is majority-owned by The Woodbridge Company (no info found), a holding company for the Thomson family of Canada.

◾ CEO is Steve Hasker

Steve assumed his role of President and Chief Executive Officer and a director of Thomson Reuters effective March 15, 2020. Previously, Steve served as Senior Adviser to TPG Capital, a private equity firm, Chief Executive Officer of CAA Global (which includes entities like CAA China, merchant bank Evolution Media and the incubator CAA Ventures), a TPG Capital portfolio company, and global president and chief operating officer of Nielsen, an information, data and measurement firm. Steve spent more than a decade with McKinsey as a partner in the global media, information and technology practice. Before joining McKinsey, Steve spent five years in several financial roles in the United States, Russia and Australia.

Steve started his career with PwC, where he qualified as a chartered accountant. He then received an MBA and master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University. He grew up in Australia and during his career he has lived and worked across North America, Europe and Asia. Steve is also a non-executive director of Appen Limited and a member of the Australia and New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants.

Source

🔺 538:

◾ Owned by ESPN & ABC(?) which is owned by Disney

When ESPN started in 1979 we were the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (thus, ESPN). However, that name took too long to paint across our chests on game day, so we dropped it in 1985 and adopted a new corporate name – ESPN, Inc.-- and a new logo. And by the way, we’re a subsidiary of ABC, Inc., which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Co. Also, the Hearst Corporation has a 20% interest in ESPN.

Founder Nate Silver left in 2023, taking the rights to his forecasting model with him to his website Silver Bulletin.

Source

Nate Silver joins prediction market Polymarket as advisor

Polymarket Raises $70m From Thiel’s Founders Fund, General Catalyst, Vitalik Buterin to Scale Global Prediction Market

◾ CEO is G. Elliott Morris

American data journalist who is best known for his work on election polling and predictive analytics. From 2018 to 2023, Morris was a data journalist for The Economist. In 2023, he became the editorial director of data analytics at ABC News including FiveThirtyEight.

Ed note: It is unclear as to who the board is or if ESPN or ABC actually run it. Maybe both?

🔷 Associated Press

◾ The Associated Press is governed by an elected board of directors. It is an American not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are distributed to its members, major U.S. daily newspapers and radio and television broadcasters.

Source

◾ CEO is Daisy Veerasingham

Daisy Veerasingham is a British businesswoman who has been the president and CEO of the Associated Press since 2021, succeeding Gary Pruitt.

She worked for LexisNexis and the Financial Times. In 2004, she was a sales director for the AP. By 2019, she was senior vice president and chief revenue officer for the company. She was later executive vice president and chief operating officer.

Source

◾ Board of Directors

• Chairperson is Gracia Martore-Gracia C. Martore is the former president and CEO of Tegna, Inc. and was CEO of the predecessor Gannett Company before its split. She serves on the board of directors of FM Global, MeadWestvaco Corporation, and Omnicom Group, and as chair of the Associated Press.
• William Lewis - CEO, The Washington Post (see NPR article on Will Lewis in Washington Post comment).
• Maha Abouelenein - CEO and Founder, Digital and Savvy
• Mark Adams-President and CEO, Adams Publishing Group
• Emily L. Barr - formerly CEO of Graham Media Group
• Kirk Davis -CEO, Harte Hanks Inc.
• Lisa M. DeSisto - CEO, Maine Trust for Local News
• Kevin D. Mowbray - President and CEO, Lee Enterprises
• Michael Newhouse - Director and Senior Executive Officer, Advance/Newhouse Companies (Note: Conde Nast is on that list and owns a chunk of Reddit)
• Mi-Ai Parrish-Professor Arizona State University, President and CEO, Map Strategies Group
• Maribel Perez Wadsworth -President and CEO, The Knight Foundation

Source

🔺 CNN:

◾ Owned by Warner Brothers Discovery

Discovery’s merger with WarnerMedia took effect on Friday afternoon, creating a streaming media giant led by CEO David Zaslav. The newly formed company, Warner Bros. Discovery, will begin publicly trading on Monday. Zaslav

The deal, first announced last May, is a climactic moment for Zaslav and his longtime deputies at Discovery, best known for brands like Animal Planet, TLC and HGTV. The merger adds HBO, CNN, TNT, Turner Sports, the Warner Bros. movie studio, and a huge raft of other media assets to the company.

Setting the stage to compete with the likes of Disney and Netflix, Zaslav said in Friday’s memo that “we are well positioned to become a top-tier streaming competitor.”

Source April 11, 2022

◾ CEO is Mark Thompson

Sir Mark John Thompson (born 31 July 1957 is a British and American media executive who is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Ancestry now owned by Blackstone, Inc., the largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, and Chief Executive Officer of the Cable News Network (CNN). He is the former president and chief executive officer of The New York Times Company. From 2004 to 2012, he was Director-General of the BBC, and before that was the Chief Executive of Channel 4. In 2009 Thompson was ranked as the 65th most powerful person in the world by Forbes magazine. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2017.

Source

Mark Thompson, the former chief executive of The New York Times and director-general of the BBC, will be the next leader of CNN, the network announced Wednesday. Source

🔷 The Guardian

◾ The Scott Trust Limited is the British company that owns Guardian Media Group and thus The Guardian and The Observer as well as various other media businesses in the UK. In 2008, it replaced the Scott Trust, which had owned The Guardian since 1936.

The company is responsible for appointing the editor of The Guardian (and those of the group’s other main newspapers) but, apart from enjoining them to continue the paper’s editorial policy on “the same lines and in the same spirit as heretofore”, it has a policy of not interfering in their decisions.

The Scott Trust Limited, with the intention being that the original trust would be wound up. Dame Liz Forgan, chair of the Scott Trust, reassured staff that the purposes of the new company remained the same as under the previous arrangements.

Source

◾ Chief Editor Katharine Sophie Viner

(born January 1971) is a British journalist and playwright. Viner previously headed The Guardian’s web operations in Australia and the United States, before being selected for the editor-in-chief’s position.

For work experience, Viner joined Cosmopolitan, a women’s monthly magazine. After three years at The Sunday Times, working as a commissioning editor and writer for its magazine. Viner joined The Guardian in 1997. Following a period on the staff of the women’s page, she became editor of the Saturday Weekend supplement in 1998. She became features editor in 2006 and deputy editor in 2008 at the same time as Ian Katz. Viner edited the Saturday edition of The Guardian from 2008 to 2012.

Source

◾ The Scott Trust Board of Directors

• Chair of Trust-Ole Jacob Sunde-He has been associated with the Schibsted Media Group ASA for 30 years, being elected to the Board in 2000 and serving as Chair since 2002. He is also the Chair of the Tinius Trust, and a member of the Board of Visitors at Columbia University, School of Journalism. He is the founder and chair of Formuesforvaltning AS private bank (Formue)
• Tracy Corrigan-She was previously chief strategy officer of Dow Jones and has held a range of senior editorial positions including editor in chief of the** Wall Street Journal Europe**, editor of the Financial Times’ Lex column and editor of FT.com. Tracy is currently a non-executive director of Barclays Bank UK PLC, Direct Line Insurance Group PLC, and Domino’s Pizza Group PLC.
• David Olusoga-Journalist and documentary maker.
• Stuart Proffitt-He has been a publishing director at Penguin Books since 1998, and before that he was the publisher of the trade division at HarperCollins for six years.
• Matthew Ryder-He is a barrister and founder member of Matrix chambers in London, specialising in human rights, media, data and information, crime and regulatory law. He was deputy mayor of London for social integration between 2016 and 2018 overseeing the mayor’s community engagement, diversity and equality work, and use of data.
• Vivian Schiller-Previously she has held multiple high-profile media roles including head of news at Twitter, general manager of NYTimes dot com and president and CEO of National Public Radio.
• Russell Scott-Previously he held multiple senior roles in publishing, digital and broadcast sectors including content director of The Football League, commercial director of Northcliffe media and managing director of fish4, a digital classified joint venture between 5 major UK regional press groups.
• Haroon Siddique-He has worked at the Guardian for over 15 years and is currently its legal affairs correspondent, previously serving as a reporter and senior reporter in the Guardian’s newsroom.
• Margaret Simons-She is an award-winning journalist, author, and journalism academic.
• Nabiha Syed-Nabiha is chief executive officer of The Markup, an award-winning journalism non-profit. Prior to launching The Markup, Nabiha spent a decade as an acclaimed media lawyer working at the frontier of technology and newsgathering, including at the New York Times and more recently at BuzzFeed where she was associate general counsel.
• Stephen Godsell-He was group general counsel and company secretary at PA Group (formerly Press Association and check out who they are), and has held senior positions at The Economist Group and Clifford Chance. Stephen is a board director and trustee of The Economist Educational Foundation, a member of the Joint Committee on Legal Deposit and a freeman of the City of London.

Source

💲 The Atlantic

◾ Owned by Laurene Powell Jobs through the Emerson Collective

On July 28, 2017, The Atlantic announced that billionaire investor and philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs (the widow of former Apple Inc. chairman and CEO Steve Jobs) had acquired majority ownership through her Emerson Collective organization

NOTE: I’m having a hard time getting info on The Emerson Collective, its Wikipedia page is their corporate speak description. I’ll update if I come across something since The Atlantic is so bad that I skip it most days to even look at the headline.

Source

◾ Nicholas Thompson is CEO

For Thompson, the role moves him from editorial leader to business figurehead. His experience as a top editor at both Wired and The New Yorker — another magazine owned by Conde Nast — undoubtedly helped prepare him for the latest shift.

Source

🔷 Mother Jones

◾ Our nonprofit newsroom is a reader-supported investigative news organization. Founded in 1976, Mother Jones is America’s longest-established investigative news organization. We are based in San Francisco and have bureaus in Washington, DC, and New York. We are independent (no corporate owners) and are accountable only to you, our readers. Our mission is to deliver hard-hitting reporting that inspires change and combats “alternative facts.”

Source

◾ CEO is Monika Bauerlein

Bauerlein was born in Germany, but has lived in several countries, including Italy, where her father, Heinz Bäuerlein, was a foreign correspondent. She came to America on a Fulbright scholarship and worked as a stringer for a variety of publications including Germany’s Die Zeit and the Associated Press.Between 1991 and 2000, she was a writer, managing editor, and interim editor in chief at City Pages, which became the sister paper to the Village Voice in Minneapolis/St. Paul in 1997.

Source

◾ Board of Directors

• Chairperson is Judy Wise-She served on President Obama’s Commission on White House Fellowships. Previously, she served as executive director of the Committee on Illinois Government and worked in the news department at both NBC TV and **CBS TV **in Chicago.
• Richard Melcher-He is a founding principal of Melcher & Tucker Consultants, a Chicago-based strategic marketing and communications firm advising small and midsize companies and nonprofit organizations. He spent two decades at Business Week magazine, managing bureaus in Chicago and London.
• Sara Frankel-couldn’t find any confirmed info other than what the site says: She founded and ran two internet startups, invested in multiple startup companies, and is currently working on a book.
• Susan Sachs-In 2004, she joined Common Sense Media as the founding COO and returned for a stint as president in 2010. Prior to that, Sachs worked for 18 years at Time Warner Inc., where she held various finance, advertising and publishing positions worldwide.
• Rafael Agustín-He serves as CEO of the Latino Film Institute, where he oversees the Youth Cinema Project, the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF), and LatinX in Animation.
• Omar Alam-He is Vice President and Associate General Counsel at Salesforce, where he leads the M&A Legal team. In this role, he serves as a trusted advisor and business partner to Salesforce’s global M&A program and Salesforce Ventures, the company’s in-house venture capital arm. Prior to Salesforce, Omar practiced **corporate law at WSGR **in the Bay Area, representing innovative technology companies throughout their business life cycles. Omar began his legal career as a law clerk to the Honorable Virginia Kendall on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
• Jane Butcher-Co-founder of the Butcher Symposia and Seed Grants • Board member of the Local Theater Company • Trustee of the Boulder Community Health Foundation • Former chair of the Conference on World Affairs • Foundation for National Progress Board Member
• Bích Ngọc Cao-She has enjoyed an unconventional career path that includes stints at organizations and companies such as Define American, (RED), the Los Angeles Times, Harvest Records, Warner Bros. Records, and MySpace. A lifelong Angeleno and USC alumna, she served for eight years as president of the Board of Library Commissioners for the city of Los Angeles.
• André Carothers-He is also general partner at the Batchery, a Berkeley-based early-stage startup incubator, and serves on the board of directors of the Furthur Foundation, the Weinmann Charitable Trust, the New Place Fund, the Rainforest Action Network, and the Story of Stuff Project.
• Lauri Fitz-Pegado-In the private sector, she advised countries, corporations, individuals, and nonprofits as a senior executive at Hill and Knowlton and Gray and Company, and as a partner at the Livingston Group. She also was an executive at Iridium, the global mobile satellite communications company.
• Bill Gee-He owned and operated a Chicago-based commercial baking business (Cloverhill Bakery) for 30 years. He has served for nine years as a board member for Chicago Public Media (WBEZ), participated on ProPublica’s Leadership Council, and worked closely with the Global Press Institute and The Trace.
• Linda W. Gruber-She is the president of the Gruber Family Foundation, established in 1987. The foundation funds in the areas of women’s issues, human rights, the arts, progressive journalism, and education.
• Emily Harris-(can’t find any more info) She joined the staff in 2018 after working in accounting in a variety of industries, including advertising and politics.
• Angie Jean-Marie-She is the founder and principal of Fait La Force Strategies, a boutique social impact consultancy and more than a decade working in policy and politics.
• Clara Jeffery (Editor in Chief)-Before joining Mother Jones, Jeffery was a senior editor of Harper’s magazine; she cut her journalistic teeth at Washington City Paper.
• Jonathan Logan-He is the founder and CEO of the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, which supports investigative journalism, documentary film and arts and culture and whose work is dedicated to social justice and strengthening democracy.
• Susan Mayer Hirsch-She is the founder of Hirsch Philanthropy Partners (now joined with Third Plateau), where she guides philanthropists to think bigger and bolder – to continually imagine new possibilities that create lasting impact.
• Grace Molteni-She is a senior designer at Mother Jones
• Gina Pell-Currently she is the Content Chief of The What. She also presides over The What Alliance, a private invitation-only social and professional network of world-class leaders from early stage entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 executives.
• Ken Pelletier-He has led several software and design projects over a 30-year career, most recently as CTO at Groupon.com. He is an investor and adviser to several early-stage startups and serves on the board of the Old Town School of Folk Music, and the Awesome Foundation of Chicago, and is partner and board member at City Winery Chicago.
• Ashok Ramani-He is a partner with Davis Polk, where he heads the firm’s IP Litigation practice.
• Vincent Robinson-He founded the firm The 360 Group in 2004 to realize his commitment to leadership in social sector organizations. He previously worked in the investment management division of Goldman Sachs.
• Robert “Rosey” Rosenthal-He worked for 22 years at The Philadelphia Inquirer, starting as a reporter and becoming its executive editor in 1998. He became managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle in 2002.
• Rinku Sen-She is a writer and a political strategist. She is currently the executive director of Narrative Initiative, where she weaves the power of narrative together with other social change strategies to advance equity and justice.
• Phil Straus-He served for 10 years on the board of the Center for Defense Information and is still fighting to control the Pentagon’s budget.
• Gabriel Stricker- Previously, he served as chief communications officer at Color Health, chief communications officer at Emerson Collective, vice president of policy and communications at Google Fiber, vice president of communications at Niantic and chief communications officer at Twitter.
• Ekow Yankah-He is a professor of law at Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University. His work focuses on criminal theory and punishment and political theory, and particularly questions of political obligation and its interaction with justifications of punishment.

Source

🔺💲 Sinclair Broadcasting Group (many local news stations)

◾ Owned by The Sinclair Broadcasting Group

A publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith.

The company is the second-largest television station operator in the United States by number of stations (after Nexstar Media Group), owning or operating a total of 193 stations across the country in over 100 markets (covering 40% of American households), and is the largest owner of stations affiliated with Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC, MyNetworkTV, and The CW. Sinclair also owns four digital multicast networks (Comet, Charge!, The Nest, and TBD), and sports-oriented cable networks (Stadium, Tennis Channel, and Bally Sports Regional Networks). On June 2, 2021, it was announced that Sinclair had become a Fortune 500 company, having reached 2020 annual revenues of US$5.9 billion (equivalent to $6.8 billion in 2023).

A 2019 study in the American Political Science Review found that “stations bought by Sinclair reduce coverage of local politics, increase national coverage and move the ideological tone of coverage in a conservative direction relative to other stations operating in the same market”. The company has been criticized by journalists and media analysts for requiring its stations to broadcast packaged video segments and its news anchors to read prepared scripts that contain pro-Trump editorial content, including warnings about purported “fake news” in mainstream media, while Trump has tweeted support for watching Sinclair over CNN and NBC.

Shell companies: Deerfield Media, Howard Stirk Holdings, and Mercury Broadcasting Company

◾ CEO is David D Smith

David D Smith

David Deniston Smith is an American businessman who is the executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group (SBGI) since January 2017, having been its president and CEO from September 1990 to January 2017.[2] In 2024, he acquired majority ownership of The Baltimore Sun and its affiliated newspapers.

Prior to Ajit Pai’s appointment as chairman of the FCC, Smith had met with Pai to discuss deregulation of the FCC’s media ownership rules. This meeting, plus Sinclair having been granted additional access to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, resulted in accusations that Sinclair was currying favor with the Trump administration in exchange for deregulation of the industry. David Smith met with Donald Trump during the 2016 election year, in which he told Mr. Trump, “We are here to deliver your message.”

◾ Board of Directors

• Chairman is David D Smith
• Frederick G Smith
• J Duncan Smith
• Robert E Smith
• Laurie R. Beyer-Ms. Beyer has served as the Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Greater Baltimore Medical Center, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Union Hospital of Cecil County (currently ChristianaCare, Union Hospital), and an auditor with Arthur Andersen LLP.
• Dr. Benjamin Carson, Sr.-Yes, that Ben Carson. He has prior experience serving on the Board of Directors of Costco Wholesale Corporation and Kellogg Company.
• Howard E. Friedman-He is the founding Partner of Lanx Management LLC, a hedge “fund of funds” as well as having been the Co-Founder, Publisher & CEO of Watermark Press, Inc and has served as President and then Chairman of the Board of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). In 2007 and in 2009, Washington Life Magazine listed Mr. Friedman as one of the 100 most powerful people in Washington D.C.
• Daniel C. Keith- He is the President and Founder of the Cavanaugh Group, Inc., a Baltimore-based investment advisory firm founded in October 1995.
• Hon. Benson Everett Legg-He has served as a Director since January 2019. Judge Legg clerked for the honorable Frank A. Kaufman of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland. Judge Legg served as Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland from 2003 to 2010.

Source

💲 Business Insider & Politico

◾ Owned by Axel Springer SE

In 2021 it was acquired for reportedly over 1 billion USD by Axel Springer SE, a German news publisher and media company. Axel Springer is Europe’s largest newspaper publisher and had previously acquired Business Insider. Unlike employees of its German newspapers, the employees of Politico do not have to sign Axel Springer’s mission statement that expresses support for Israel and America’s and Europe’s transatlantic alliance.

Source

◾ Mathias Döpfner is CEO

He is the CEO and 22% owner of media group Axel Springer SE. From 2016 to 2022 he was president of the Federal Association of Digital Publishers and Newspaper Publishers (BDZV).

In 2020, Friede Springer appointed Mathias Döpfner as her successor through a combination of gifting, selling, and transferring voting rights associated with her shares in the company. As part of this transition, Springer sold a 4.1% share directly to Döpfner and gifted him an additional 15%, thereby increasing his direct ownership to 22%. Furthermore, Springer transferred to Döpfner the voting rights for her remaining 22% stake in the company.

In February 2023 The Economist reported on Döpfner’s plans to expand the Springer group’s media presence in the United States.

Source

💲 TIME

◾ Owned by Marc Benioff

In October 2018, Meredith Corporation (Koch Brothers) sold Time to Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne for $190 million. In 2003, President George W. Bush appointed Benioff co-chair of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee. Mark Benioff is also CEO of Salesforce but has said they are to be kept separate.

Source

Salesforce is going through some things.

Then there are the activists. Multiple activist investors have piled into Salesforce stock in recent months at a pace that could be unprecedented. Macquarie Capital analyst Sarah Hindlian-Bowler told MarketWatch that in her 22-plus years of covering the software industry, she has never seen such a sudden addition of activists in one company.

The most prominent is the hedge fund Elliott Management, which has amassed a multibillion-dollar stake in the cloud software giant. Other activists who purchased stakes and are seeking change are ValueAct Capital, Starboard Capital and Inclusive Capital. Third Point LLC purchased a stake earlier this month, but has so far remained silent, while Starboard founder Jeff Smith told CNBC late last year the firm was concerned about Salesforce’s profit margins relative to its rivals in cloud software.

Source

◾ Jessica Sibley is CEO

She was publisher of Bloomberg BusinessWeek and rise to major leadership positions at media companies including Conde Nast and Forbes.

Source (not a lot on her, not even a Wikipedia page)

💲 Wall Street Journal

◾ Owned by The Murdoch Family

News Corporation, stylized as News Corp,[3] is an American mass media and publishing company headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Since March 19, 2019, Fox Corporation, which holds 21st Century Fox’s national broadcasting, news and sports assets (following its sale to Disney the next day), is also under the Murdoch family’s control.

On September 21, 2023, Rupert Murdoch announced he would step down as News Corp’s chairman by November.

Source

◾ Rupert Murdoch is chair, while his son Lachlan Murdoch is executive chair and CEO.

Murdoch made his first acquisition in the United States in 1973, when he purchased the San Antonio Express-News. In 1974, Murdoch moved to New York City, to expand into the US market; however, he retained interests in Australia and Britain. Soon afterwards, he founded Star, a supermarket tabloid, and in 1976, he purchased the New York Post. On 4 September 1985, Murdoch became a naturalized citizen to satisfy the legal requirement that only US citizens were permitted to own US television stations.

According to The New York Times, Ronald Reagan’s campaign team credited Murdoch and the Post for his victory in New York in the 1980 United States presidential election. Reagan later “waived a prohibition against owning a television station and a newspaper in the same market,” allowing Murdoch to continue to control The New York Post and The Boston Herald while expanding into television. In September 2021, Fox Corporation acquired TMZ from WarnerMedia in a deal worth about $50 million with TMZ being operated under the Fox Entertainment division

In March 2014, Murdoch was appointed as non-executive co-chairman of News Corp. and 21st Century Fox Inc. in a move that was seen as succession planning for the media empire.[41][42][43][44][45][46] Murdoch stood aside as chairman and a Director of Ten Network Holdings.[47] In June 2015 he was named as Executive Chairman of 21st Century Fox.

In 2021, Lachlan Murdoch and his father Rupert were the defendants in a $1.6 billion lawsuit, filed by voting machine maker Dominion Voting Systems, for knowingly and maliciously spreading false accusations that Dominion committed election fraud. Dominion claimed, in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s loss of the 2020 presidential election, that Fox News began to lose viewership, and was negatively impacted, as President Trump criticised Fox News and bolstered competitors that would spread his accusations of fraud. Dominion continued that, under the direction of Lachlan Murdoch, Fox News then made unsubstantiated accusations of fraud against Dominion, and intentionally invited guests that Fox News’ hosts knew were making false and defamatory statements, while the hosts endorsed, repeated, and amplified statements they knew to be defamatory and false.

Source Source 2

🔷 British Broadcasting Company (BBC)

◾ The BBC is a statutory corporation, independent from direct government intervention, with its activities being overseen from April 2017 by the BBC Board and regulated by Ofcom.

In the United Kingdom, a statutory corporation is a corporate body created by statute. It typically has no shareholders and its powers are defined by the Act of Parliament which creates it, and may be modified by later legislation. Such bodies were often created to provide public services.

Its work is funded principally by an annual television license fee which is charged to all British households, companies, and organizations using any type of equipment to receive or record live television broadcasts or to use the BBC’s streaming service, iPlayer. The fee is set by the British Government, agreed by Parliament, and is used to fund the BBC’s radio, TV, and online services covering the nations and regions of the UK.

Source

◾ CEO is Samir Shah

Dr Samir Shah, CBE (born 29 January 1952), is a British-Indian television and radio executive. He has worked for London Weekend Television, the BBC, and is the chief executive of Juniper TV, a British company. In 2021, he co-authored the UK government’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report.

Source

◾ Ofcom-the regulating authority

The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom.

Ofcom has wide-ranging powers across the television, radio, telecoms and postal sectors. It has a statutory duty to represent the interests of citizens and consumers by promoting competition and protecting the public from harmful or offensive material.

Source

◾ Board of Directors

The BBC Board is the governing board of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The board replaced the BBC Trust in April 2017.

• Chair is Samir Shah
• Tim Davie-Before joining the BBC, he was Vice President of Marketing and Franchise at PepsiCo Europe. Before this, Tim worked for Procter and Gamble after leaving Cambridge University where he read English.
• Shumeet Banerji-He has served on the Board of Directors of Silicon Valley pioneer Hewlett Packard Company and its successor HP, Inc since 2011. Mr. Banerji is an Independent Director of Jio Platforms Limited, India’s most ambitious digital platform play. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Jio’s parent Reliance Industries Limited. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Felix Pharmaceuticals (Ireland), and of the Panel of Senior Advisers of Chatham House (The Royal Institute of International Affairs, UK).
• Sir Damon Buffini-He was a founding partner of alternative asset manager Permira and worked there for 27 years.
• Sir Robbie Gibb-He left the BBC in 2017 to become Director of Communications at No10 Downing Street (official residence and office of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom), stepping down in 2019.
• Muriel Gray- She is the former Chair of the Board of Governors at The Glasgow School Of Art and a Trustee of the British Museum.
• Chris Jones-He is a chartered accountant who was a Senior Audit Partner at PwC specialising in the audit of banks and other financial services companies.
• Charlotte Moore-She has been Controller of BBC One since June 2013.
• Michael Plaut-He is a former Chair of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) Wales, he is Chair of the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and a Governor of the University of South Wales.
• Sir Nicholas Serota CH-He is Chair of Arts Council England, a post he took up in February 2017. Previously he spent almost 30 years as Director of Tate.
• Michael Smyth CBE KC (Hon)-He is an experienced lawyer and regulator. He was for 20 years a partner at international law firm Clifford Chance and head of the firm’s government and public policy practice.
• Marinella Soldi-She was CEO of Discovery Networks Southern Europe (Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France) for 10 years. Before joining Discovery, she trained and worked for leading international brands in the technology and media sectors as a leadership coach for nine years.
• Leigh Tavaziva-She was Managing Director of Customer Operations at British Gas and Group Director of Strategy and Transformation at Centrica.
• Deborah Turness-She was CEO of ITNand the first president of NBC News International, the global arm of American news network NBC News.

Source