Dossier mode
The Ellison Press
The same investigation, restaged one beat at a time. Drive it with the arrow keys, space, or autoplay. Nothing is cut from the piece — long runs are split across frames. Read the full investigation or open the 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: the cloud, the TikTok algorithm, a Hollywood studio, and soon two national news networks.
A single family is assembling the cloud infrastructure, the TikTok recommendation algorithm, a major studio, and two national news networks — with Gulf sovereign wealth funding the largest all-cash media deal in history.
The mergers and the money are documented. Where the record is an allegation, we grade it as one.
of the combined Paramount-WBD company would be owned at close by the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar (non-voting; ~$24B) — a foreign stake the European Commission has opened an inquiry into.
April 2026 regulatory filing (via Variety)
Oracle's first customer was the CIA — and its name came from a CIA-funded database project.
Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates founded the company in 1977; the CIA was its first customer, and 'Oracle' came from the codename of a CIA-funded project the founders had worked on at Ampex. Ellison has acknowledged this repeatedly in public keynotes. It is the same intelligence-origin pattern the site documents for Palantir.
Oracle now oversees, retrains, and secures TikTok's US recommendation algorithm.
Under the 2025 forced-divestiture arrangement, TikTok's US operations were placed into a joint venture with Oracle designated to oversee the US algorithm, extending its earlier 'Project Texas' data-hosting role; a March 2026 filing valued Oracle's stake at ~$2 billion. 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 is acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery for ~$110.9B — the DOJ cleared it, and it would hand the Ellisons CNN. Trump said he wanted it that way.
Announced Feb 27, 2026 at $31/share (~$81B equity, ~$110.9B enterprise value) — the largest all-cash transaction in corporate history. WBD shareholders approved it; the DOJ Antitrust Division cleared it June 12, 2026. Closing gives the Ellison-controlled company HBO, the Warner Bros. studio, and CNN. President Trump publicly said he wanted CNN 'in the hands of the Ellisons.'
The CBS News turn: Paramount bought The Free Press, installed Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief, and canceled Colbert's Late Show.
After Skydance took over, the company acquired Bari Weiss's Free Press (~$150M) and installed her as CBS News editor-in-chief in October 2025, and canceled The Late Show. Both moves drew Trump's praise and were widely read as a rightward repositioning. We report the acquisition, the appointment, and the cancellation as documented editorial decisions — we do not, in our own voice, characterize the resulting coverage.
The accountability fights: 12 Democratic state AGs sued to block the merger, and 7 of 10 recent FCC commissioners took Paramount gala tickets while the agency reviewed its deals.
On July 13, 2026, 12 state AGs (led by California's Bonta) sued to block the merger on antitrust grounds — a state-vs-federal split after the DOJ cleared it. Separately, ProPublica found seven of ten recent FCC commissioners accepted Kennedy Center gala tickets from CBS/Paramount ($260K+); Chair Carr sat in a skybox with David Ellison; watchdogs (CREW, Eisen's Democracy Defenders Fund) filed ethics complaints. We report the gifts, the complaints, and the 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, and is personally close to Netanyahu.
In 2017 Ellison gave a reported ~$16.6M to Friends of the IDF — reported as the largest single gift in the organization's history — with cumulative giving reported at $26M+ (treated as reported, appearing across the political spectrum). He is personally close to Netanyahu: the PM has stayed on Lanai, the island Ellison owns, and Ellison was a witness in Netanyahu's corruption trial (which also surfaced a reported Oracle board-seat offer, treated as reported).
A civil lawsuit names Ellison among defendants it alleges helped fund West Bank settlements.
Ellison is named as a defendant in a civil suit (reported at ~$34.5B in claimed damages) alleging a set of philanthropists and firms funded Israeli settlement construction in the occupied West Bank. What is FACT is that the lawsuit exists and names him; the underlying claim that he personally financed settlements is an UNPROVEN civil allegation, reported as such — not a finding. We looked at the viral '$26M to the IDF and the settlements' framing and rejected it: the aggregation it traces to does not substantiate the settlement claim even in its own text.
What is documented, and what the deck refuses to assert.
- The cloud, the TikTok algorithm, the $110.9B WBD deal, and 38.5% Gulf ownership.
- The CBS turn (Free Press/Weiss/Colbert) and the FCC gala gifts + timeline.
- Ellison's ~$16.6M FIDF gift, his Netanyahu ties, and the existence of the settlements suit.
- That Ellison personally financed West Bank settlements — an unproven civil allegation.
- That the FCC gifts caused any vote; and any characterization of CBS's resulting coverage.
Why it matters, and where it connects.
This is media concentration at a scale the hub was built to track: cloud infrastructure, the TikTok algorithm, a studio, and two national news networks converging on one family, underwritten by Gulf sovereign wealth. Oracle's CIA origin threads into Surveillance States; Ellison's FIDF giving and Netanyahu ties into Israeli Influence — each carried at exactly the grade the record supports, with the allegations kept as allegations.