MIRROR DID YOU KNOW SILICON VALLEY VIRTUALLY OWNS US MAINSTREAM MEDIA? Today social media is probably the most important factor when it comes to moulding public opinion. Till the 2000s the mainstream media ruled the narrative but in the 2010s it totally took over. Earlier heads of states would look at the papers every morning and prime time TV at night to gauge where they stood. Now they probably look at Twitter trends Sunil Rajguru [email protected] 56 PCQUEST SEPTEMBER 2020 pcquest.com twitter.com/pcquest facebook.com/pcquest linkd.in/pcquest [email protected] acebook surpassed 2 billion users while for $315 million. AOL itself was acquired by Verizon Instagram and WhatsApp crossed 1 billion and Communications for $4.4 billion. Time Warner was a were being chased by something like TikTok. mainstream media giant and had hundreds of entities Mainstream media simply can’t compete. (magazines, TV channels etc) including CNN, HBO, FWhile social media, of course, is owned by Silicon Warner Brothers, Time magazine etc. The whopping Valley giants, did you know that they virtually own $165 billion merger of AOL and Time Warner fell the mainstream media too? First up is the most through at the beginning of the millennium. If not IT obvious one. The richest man in the world Je Bezos then at least ICT. AT&T has taken over Time Warner. (not Amazon) bought the Washington Post for a cool Talking of ICT, Mexican telecom billionaire Carlos $250 million way back in 2013. Not to be outdone, Slim is now the single largest shareholder of the New Salesforce founder Marc Benio and wife Lynne York Times. Coming back to HuPo, it was founded bought Time magazine for $190 million. by a conservative turned liberal (Ariana Hungton) The Atlantic monthly is owned by the Emerson and another conservative (Andrew Breitbart). The Collective, founded by Laurene Powell Jobs. If you other two founders Jonah Peretti and Kenneth Lerer haven’t guessed already, then Laurene is the widow founded Buzzfeed, thanks to, no surprises here, the of billionaire icon Steve Jobs. The MS in MSNBC likes of Softbank and VC rms. Another giant, USA stands for Microsoft, which invested $221 million but Today, was taken over by Gannett, which is partially later slowly pulled out of the venture. Slate magazine owned by Softbank. Vox has also received a lot of VC was also once under Microsoft. Both Jobs and Gates funding. Vox owns New York magazine. had a mainstream media link. Ownership is one thing, but donations ow in Hungton Post was acquired by AOL in 2011 from Silicon Valley billionaires regularly. Like recently former Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave $4.7 million to NPR, which is a Ruling the advertising pie too national syndicator to more than 1000 public radio stations all over America. There are many such instances. You also cannot really take on a Silicon Valley mogul which the then popular Gawker learned the hard way and it went down under after its confrontation with Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and current board member of Facebook. The only person who has managed to retain some control is Rupert Murdoch with Fox News and The Wall Last year Google announced that it had made a whopping $4.7 Street Journal. But you billion the previous year through digital advertising just via its hardly hear much of him tie-ups with just the US news industry! What must be the figure nowadays. for all social media for all countries? Social media is eating a huge Which is more chunk of the mainstream media advertising piebut taking away powerful? Social media their readership as most people get their news via WhatsApp and or mainstream media? To their Twitter feeds. Now anyone can become an online writer, Silicon Valley, it doesn’t photographer, videographer and make his or her content go viral. matter—they virtually own them both! pcquest.com twitter.com/pcquest facebook.com/pcquest linkd.in/pcquest [email protected] SEPTEMBER 2020 PCQUEST 57.