The major players in legacy media’s rightward shift
As storied institutions across journalism and media pivot toward more MAGA-friendly offerings, these are the movers and shakers shifting what many of us read, hear and watch
President Donald Trump’s consolidation of power across the federal government continues apace. With it, a similar form of conservative capture has been mirrored across the avenues of mass media in the U.S.
From the rolling public turmoil at The Washington Post and CBS to behind-the-scenes machinations at institutions like The New York Times, huge swaths of mainstream American media have begun embracing a decidedly conservative agenda. These are the media players helping fuel America’s rightward media pivot.
Bari Weiss, CBS
Perhaps the single most-watched media executive of the past year, Substack star turned CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss has marked her meteoric rise to the top of a premier television network with moments of controversy, conspicuous high-profile resignations and declining viewership. The network’s evening news under Weiss “is waving the American flag” and “not apologizing" for the network’s “pro-U.S. editorial stance,” Variety said.
Article continues belowThe Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Weiss’ claims to be “improving ‘free speech’ in the news” come as she is also “clearly moving CBS in a more conservative direction,” The Nation said. Weiss was “personally recruited by Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison” to lead CBS’s news operations, said The Los Angeles Times, after she founded the “conservative-friendly digital news site The Free Press.”
Larry and David Ellison, Paramount Skydance
Billionaire father and son duo Larry — founder of Oracle — and David — CEO of Paramount Skydance — Ellison control “one of the world’s largest audiovisual and news conglomerates.” This pair has the ability to “shape Hollywood’s rules” with its production studios and “influence the news” through both CBS and CNN, said El País.
The duo also controls “numerous entertainment channels that allow them to project their worldview,” said El País. Both Ellisons have been “repeated” visitors at Trump’s White House, CNN said. During the Ellisons’ ultimately successful bid to purchase Warner Brothers this past winter, David “offered assurances” to the White House that “if he bought Warner, he’d make sweeping changes to CNN, a common target of President Trump’s ire,” The Wall Street Journal said.
Lachlan Murdoch, News Corp.
Scion of the powerful Rupert Murdoch-founded News Corp dynasty, eldest son Lachlan completed his bid to assume control of his father’s empire in September 2025. The move guaranteed the “empire’s various outlets, including Fox News, The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, will remain conservative” after 95-year-old Rupert’s eventual death, The New York Times said.
Lachlan is seen as being the “most likely heir to preserve the conservative identity that defines his father’s portfolio” compared to siblings Prue, Liz and James, NPR News said. Still, Lachlan likely won’t seek the “‘kingmaker’ role in Republican political circles” that his father frequented. He’s “kind of a little bit more hands-off” in that respect, said biographer Paddy Manning to NPR in 2022.
Jeff Bezos, The Washington Post
After ushering in The Washington Post’s era of claiming “Democracy dies in the Darkness” during the first Trump administration, billionaire tech oligarch and Post-owner Jeff Bezos has taken a decidedly less antagonistic stance in the regime’s second turn in office. Over the past year, Bezos has seemed to be “pursuing a policy of appeasement” toward MAGA officials, instructing editorial page writers to focus on the “twin pillars of personal liberties and free markets,” The New Yorker said. Bezos’ shift means that Washington, D.C., a city that Democratic presidential candidates “generally carry with around 90% of the vote,” currently has “three conservative voices and no longer has a single liberal newspaper,” said The New Republic.
Brian Calle, LA Weekly
When the Seminal Media investment group purchased LA Weekly in 2017, it quickly installed Brian Calle, a “conservative-leaning former opinion editor,” to lead its new acquisition, said The Wrap. Calle’s tenure began with a series of deep layoffs, prompting a “furious counterattack” by former staffers who “alleged Calle heads a conservative conspiracy” to transform the “historically progressive” publication into “an alt-right rag,” said Columbia Journalism Review.
Calle, during his prior stint atop the editorial page at the Orange County Register, “pushed the paper’s editorial voice to the right,” while his time as VP at the “notoriously right-wing” Claremont Institute suggested his “conservative aims when it comes to the editorial future of LA Weekly,” said Knock LA. “Downplaying” his rightward inclinations is “exactly the opposite” of what Calle should be doing, said the right-leaning National Review in 2018 after he assumed control of the paper. “Prudent conservatism can save the LA Weekly.”
Patrick Soon-Shiong, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, after nixing a planned 2024 endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, justified his decision as righting an “unacceptable” wrong at the paper he purchased in 2018. “As you can see,” Soon-Shiong said during a podcast interview with arch MAGA personality Tucker Carlson, it was “because it’s a left lean, they wrote terrible stories about President Trump.”
Soon-Shiong’s appearance with Carlson came as the billionaire physician and investor “tries to attract more conservative readers to his newspaper,” which he says “has become too liberal,” said Politico. After “unsuccessfully angling for a place” in the president’s first administration, Soon-Shiong has “moved ever closer to Trump,” said Politico separately, “appearing in conservative media and accusing his own newspaper of editorial bias and becoming an ‘echo chamber’ for progressive politics.”
