Investigation · Media Ownership Hub

The Ellison press.

One father built a database company whose first customer was the CIA. One son, in a single year, took over CBS, installed a hand-picked editor, and moved to swallow CNN. Between them they hold the cloud, the TikTok algorithm, a Hollywood studio, and — soon — two national news networks.

This is a page about concentration and installation, name by name. Every corporate fact here is confirmed by filings or the companies’ own statements. We add the piece the record was missing — Larry Ellison’s documented pro-Israel giving — and we draw a hard line around it: we report what a specific family owns, funds, and did, and we refuse the lazy leap into “they control the media.” The facts are heavy enough without it.

The record ↓Where we draw the line

§1 · Summary Brief

What this page is about

Larry Ellison founded the company that became Oracle in 1977; the CIA was its first customer, and the name came from a CIA database project. Nearly fifty years later, Oracle was handed oversight of the TikTok US recommendation algorithm, and Larry’s son David — now CEO of Paramount Skydance — bought CBS, installed Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News, and struck a DOJ-cleared, ~$110.9 billion deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, the owner of CNN and HBO.

The father is also one of the largest individual American donors to the Israeli military’s US support charity, and is personally close to Benjamin Netanyahu. This page grades the whole stack. It is deliberately disciplined: we document what the Ellisons own, fund, and did — and we mark clearly the line between that documented record and the conspiracy-flavored version of it, which we do not endorse.

What we are NOT saying

We are not claiming that “Zionists” or “the lobby” control the media, that Jewish people run the news, or that CBS and CNN coverage is — in our own voice — pro-Israel propaganda. Those are the exact leaps this page refuses. What we document is a specific family: what it owns, what its patriarch funds, and the editorial moves it has already made. We would write the identical page about any billionaire with a foreign political commitment buying up the news. And we treat the settlement-funding claim as what it is — an unproven civil allegation in a pending lawsuit, not a finding.

The record, in order

6 entries · scroll →

Every dated event on this page, assembled chronologically. The page may cover events in a different order for the narrative; this is the straight timeline.

§2 · The Record

The stack, claim by claim

The six corporate facts below are confirmed by filings and the companies’ own statements; they port the record already on the Media Ownership hub. The final three add the Israel dimension — graded conservatively, with the exact figure and the unproven allegation flagged as such.

Oracle's CIA origin and the 'Oracle' project name

FACT

Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates founded Software Development Laboratories in 1977. The CIA was the company’s first customer, and the name ‘Oracle’ came from the codename of a CIA-funded database project the founders had worked on earlier at Ampex Corporation. Ellison has repeatedly acknowledged this in public keynotes and interviews, joking that the CIA was Oracle’s first customer and that the original project failed, which is why the name was free to use. It is the same intelligence-origin pattern the site documents for Palantir — a company built to serve the security state before it served anyone else.

Oracle, the TikTok US deal, and the algorithm

FACT

Under the 2025 forced-divestiture arrangement, TikTok’s US operations were placed into a joint venture, and Oracle was designated to oversee, retrain, and secure the US recommendation algorithm, extending its earlier ‘Project Texas’ data-hosting role. A March 2026 filing valued Oracle’s stake in the US joint venture at roughly $2 billion. Reporting on the precise equity percentage and board composition varied through the deal’s evolution, so we grade the algorithm-oversight and data-custody facts as established and treat the exact stake-and-seat figures as reported rather than final.

David Ellison's Paramount Skydance and the DOJ-cleared Warner Bros. Discovery deal

FACT

David Ellison completed the Skydance-Paramount-National Amusements merger in 2025 and became CEO of the combined company, trading as PSKY. On February 27, 2026, Paramount Skydance announced a definitive agreement to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery for $31 per share in cash — roughly $81 billion in equity, about $110.9 billion in enterprise value, the largest all-cash transaction in corporate history. WBD shareholders approved the deal in April 2026, and the DOJ Antitrust Division cleared it on June 12, 2026. Closing would give the Ellison-controlled company HBO, the Warner Bros. studio, and CNN. President Trump publicly said he wanted CNN ‘in the hands of the Ellisons.’

Gulf sovereign-wealth backing: 38.5% at close

FACT

An April 2026 regulatory filing established that, following the WBD merger’s completion, the combined Paramount-WBD company would be 38.5% owned by the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (Abu Dhabi), and Qatar, with those holdings structured as non-voting. The Gulf commitment was reported at roughly $24 billion. The European Commission opened an inquiry into the Middle Eastern funding. The 38.5%-at-close figure is from the filing itself; further Gulf participation could push the combined economic stake higher over time.

The CBS News turn: buying The Free Press, installing Bari Weiss, canceling the Late Show

FACT

After Skydance took over Paramount, the company acquired The Free Press — the outlet founded by Bari Weiss — for an estimated $150 million in cash and stock, and installed Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News in October 2025. The company also canceled Stephen Colbert’s Late Show. Both moves drew public praise from President Trump and were widely read in the press as a rightward editorial repositioning of CBS News under Ellison ownership. The acquisition, the appointment, and the cancellation are all confirmed. We report these as documented editorial decisions; we do not, in our own voice, characterize the resulting news coverage.

The 12-state antitrust lawsuit to block the WBD deal

FACT

On July 13, 2026, a coalition of 12 Democratic state attorneys general, led by California’s Rob Bonta, filed a federal lawsuit to block the Paramount-WBD merger on antitrust grounds, arguing the combined company would control roughly 27 percent of wide-release film distribution, about 30 percent of blockbuster distribution, and around 27 percent of the basic-cable-channel market. The suit came after the DOJ had already cleared the deal, setting up a state-versus-federal split over the largest media merger in history.

FCC commissioners took luxury Kennedy Center gala tickets from Paramount while the agency reviewed its mergers, drawing ethics complaints.

FACT

A ProPublica investigation found that seven of the ten FCC commissioners who served since 2016 accepted Kennedy Center honors gala tickets from CBS or its parent, Paramount — worth more than $260,000 in total — while the agency was reviewing or about to review Paramount business, including two megamergers. FCC Chair Brendan Carr reported accepting such tickets eight times since his 2017 appointment, totaling over $75,000; at the December 2025 gala he sat in a private skybox with Paramount CEO David Ellison and other Paramount and CBS executives (skybox seats listed at $125,000 each by Kennedy Center guidelines), disclosing $12,390 in tickets. Commissioner Olivia Trusty disclosed December 2025 tickets worth more than $12,000. Both Carr and Trusty had voted in 2025 to approve Paramount’s merger with Skydance. Federal ethics rules bar employees from taking gifts from any entity their agency regulates or that seeks official action from it. On July 30, 2026, two watchdog groups — the Democracy Defenders Fund (led by former Obama White House ethics czar Norman Eisen) and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) — filed complaints with the Office of Government Ethics and the FCC’s inspector general and ethics office, demanding investigations and Carr’s recusal from the pending ~$111 billion Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery review. Four ethics experts told ProPublica that Carr and Trusty had compromised the FCC’s impartiality. In response, an FCC spokesperson said agency ethics officers had for years cleared commissioners to accept the tickets, and Paramount called it a decades-long CBS practice of inviting officials from both parties. What is documented is the pattern of gifts, the disclosures, the complaints, and the timing: hours after last year’s gala ended, Paramount announced its hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, and about three months later Carr publicly endorsed the deal on CNBC and promised swift approval. We report the gifts, the complaints, and that timeline; we do not, in our own voice, assert the tickets caused any FCC vote.

Larry Ellison is one of the largest individual donors to the Israeli military's US support charity.

FACT

In 2017, Ellison gave a reported ~$16.6 million to Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) — reported at the time as the largest single gift in the organization’s history, announced at its Western Region gala. FIDF is a US charity that raises money for programs supporting IDF soldiers. Ellison’s total FIDF giving since 2014 is reported at over $26 million; we anchor on the confirmed 2017 gift and treat the cumulative figure as reported (it appears across sources spanning the political spectrum, from Truthout on the left to the right-leaning InfluenceWatch, rather than from a single advocacy post).

A civil lawsuit names Ellison among defendants it alleges helped fund West Bank settlements.

FACT

Ellison was named as a defendant in a civil lawsuit brought on behalf of Palestinian Americans (reported at ~$34.5 billion in claimed damages) alleging that a set of philanthropists, businesspeople, and corporations funded the construction of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. What is FACT is that the lawsuit exists and names him; the underlying claim that Ellison personally financed settlements is an UNPROVEN civil allegation, and we report it as such — not as a finding. We looked at the viral ‘$26M to the IDF and the settlements’ framing and rejected it: the aggregation post it traces to does not substantiate the settlement claim even in its own text. The lawsuit is the proper, documentable hook.

Palestinian-American suit names philanthropists and firms backing settlements — CBS News San Francisco

Ellison is personally close to Benjamin Netanyahu.

FACT

Ellison and Netanyahu have a documented personal relationship: Netanyahu has stayed on Lanai, the Hawaiian island Ellison owns, and Ellison was a witness in Netanyahu’s long-running corruption trial. Separately, reporting drawn from that trial record says Ellison offered Netanyahu a seat on Oracle’s board (reported at roughly $450,000 a year plus shares); we treat the board-seat offer as reported (probably true, single-thread trial-record sourcing) and the personal ties and trial testimony as confirmed.

§3 · Record vs Narrative

Where we draw the line

A named family, not a group. Everything here is about Larry and David Ellison and specific, sourced facts. We do not say “Zionists control the media,” “the lobby owns the news,” or anything about Jewish people as a class. Concentrated media ownership by anyideologically committed billionaire is the concern — and we would run the identical page about a patron funding any foreign military.
Ownership and donations are not proof of slanted coverage. We document who owns the networks, what the patriarch funds, and the editorial moves already made — the Free Press purchase, the Weiss appointment, the Colbert cancellation. We do not assert, in our own voice, that CBS or CNN output is therefore pro-Israel propaganda. That inference, if a reader draws it, is theirs; our job is to lay the structure on the table.
The settlement claim stays an allegation. A civil suit names Ellison among alleged settlement funders. We report the suit; we do not report the allegation as true. A pending complaint is not a finding, and we grade it that way.
We killed our own weakest source. The circulating “$26M to the IDF and the settlements” graphic traces to an aggregation post whose own text doesn’t support the settlement half of its headline. We threw it out and built on the confirmed 2017 gift and the court record instead.

§4 · Why It Matters

Who owns the window you see the world through

The value of this page is the stack, not any single line. One family now sits astride the cloud that stores the internet, the algorithm that feeds a generation, a Hollywood studio, and — pending close — two of America’s biggest news networks, having already hand-picked who runs one newsroom. The company was built to serve the security state; the patriarch is one of the largest American funders of a foreign military. None of that requires a conspiracy to matter. It sits beside the Surveillance States hub’s Palantir material — same intelligence-origin pattern — and the Israeli Influence hub, as one more graded, sourced entry with the trope-adjacent version named and refused.

§5 · FAQ

Questions worth taking seriously

Isn't this just the antisemitic 'Jews control the media' trope in a new coat?

No, and we are careful to keep it from becoming that. This page is about two named individuals — Larry and David Ellison — and specific, sourced facts about what they own, fund, and did. It makes no claim about Jewish people, “Zionists,” or “the lobby” as a group, and it would read identically if written about any billionaire with a foreign political commitment buying up the news. Concentrated media ownership is the concern, not anyone’s ethnicity or religion.

Does Ellison ownership mean CBS and CNN coverage is now pro-Israel?

We don’t assert that. We document the ownership, the patriarch’s pro-Israel giving, and the specific editorial moves already made — the Free Press purchase, installing Bari Weiss, canceling Colbert — all confirmed facts. Whether that shapes coverage is a fair question for a reader to weigh against what the networks actually air; it is not a conclusion we state in our own voice.

Did Larry Ellison fund illegal West Bank settlements?

A civil lawsuit brought on behalf of Palestinian Americans names him among defendants it alleges funded settlement construction. That the lawsuit exists and names him is fact; the allegation itself is unproven and we do not report it as true. We deliberately rejected the viral “gave $26M to the settlements” framing, because the post it traces to doesn’t support that claim even in its own text.

Is the $26 million donation figure solid?

The ~$16.6 million single gift to FIDF in 2017 is confirmed and was reported at the time as the largest in the charity’s history. The cumulative “>$26 million since 2014” figure is reported across sources spanning the political spectrum, but we present it as reported rather than stamping the exact total as fact — the confirmed 2017 gift is the anchor.

§6 · Standing Invitation

If you are named on this page

If you are named on this page, or are a party materially affected by the claims made here, and you wish to respond, correct the record, or add context, use the Contact page. Responses are published verbatim alongside the original claim, with the sender identified and the date of receipt. The channel stays open for the life of the page.

This site aggregates and grades a record that other outlets and primary sources have already put on the record. Every FACT-graded claim above is sourced to court filings, government reports, sworn whistleblower disclosures, published investigative journalism, or named-source statements. The citations are the accountability mechanism; this section is how you get on the record too.

§7 · Sources