When the news got out that the billionaire Koch brothers were trying to buy the Los Angeles Times and other major newspapers, an alarm went out across the United States.
The two oil-and-chemical industrialists are well known for having quietly bankrolled the right-wing, anti-immigrant Tea Party. And at a recent meeting with other deep-pocket investors, they laid out a 10-year plan to control the political direction of the country.
Buying the Tribune Company — which owns the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, and others — could be step one of their plan. And the Kochs’ interest in the Tribune Company is typical of the wave of newspaper takeovers by politically aggressive billionaires today.
The Kochs aren’t the only ones interested in buying the Tribune Company. International media magnate Rupert Murdoch (Fox News) has also shown an interest in the chain, as he has in the Media News Group (see story this page).
Murdoch is just as political as the Kochs. Before the 2012 election, he covertly courted General David Petraeus to run for president against Obama, promising to throw his newspaper and TV empire behind him if he did.
Among those interested in buying the LA Times alone are Los Angeles billionaires Ron Burkle and Eli Broad, who together tried to buy it just a few years ago.
Both regularly put big money into the Democratic Party. Until recently, Burkle had ex-President Bill Clinton on his payroll, and Broad has not tried to hide his interest in kicking organized labor out of the Democratic Party and remaking it as a party of big business.
In the hands of men such as these, the nation’s news media are becoming ever more obvious creatures of the one percent, held both for profit and for propaganda purposes.
Today, the struggling alternative press, including the newspaper in your hands has become the true mainstream media — of, by, and for the 99 percent.
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