The Global information wars are starting to congeal into a handful of entities. Some of the main characters are NewsCorp, MNG Enterprises, Inc., (Digital First Media), and SoftBank

NewsCorp owns Storyful which aggregates and discriminates stories from social media. Their clients are – Wall Street Journal, BBC, New York Times, YouTube, ITN, Channel 4 News, CNN, ABC News, FOX News, and the Washington Post. With many more clients not wanting to be known. NewsCorp is controlled by Rupert Murdoch, (Australian) and in July 2020, his son James Murdoch resigned from the board sighting disagreements over editorial content and certain other strategic decisions.

Softbank has been buying media at an alarming rate. NewsCorp sold the Dow Jones Local Media Group to a subsidiary of Fortress Investment Group – (The same company that was planning to invest in Weinstein Co, and had a $100 mil investment in Theranos.) Fortress Investment Group was sold to SoftBank Group Corp in December 2019 for $3.3Bil. SoftBank now controls Gannet Company, which merged with Gatehouse Media. The combined company controls media reaching over 90% of the US population. Gatehouse Media operated over 569 local-market websites, 684 community publications, and 144 daily newspapers. SoftBank has purchased interests in Ustream and eAccess, merging with Willcom and becoming a subsidiary of Yahoo Japan. Softbank also owns a 24% stake in T-Mobile, 87% of Brightstar. Most glaringly is the control of Masayoshi Son, (Japanese) who has stated that he intends to invest $50 bil per year through the “Vision Fund” which as of July has invested heavily in US tech stocks. In August 2019, New Media Investment Group bought Gannett and retained the Gannett name. This became the largest newspaper publisher in the United States.

Digital First Media is a rather newcomer to the media game. Growing to the point of having over 66 million viewers, DFM made an unsolicited bid to acquire Gannett in January 2019. DFM is controlled by Alden Global Capital – and Randall Smith (New York, USA) through his “Smith Management LLC” The company owns positions with Tribune Publishing, Nexstar Broadcasting, Sinclair Broadcasting, ViacomCBS. As of Feb 2020 – The Chairman and CEO have both stepped down.

Combined – these three companies control most of the news in the United States. Their total control reach is hard to determine based on all the subsidiaries and ownership influence for publicly held companies.