Last Updated 6/10/2024
Voting and control dynamics are incredibly complex, and it will require significantly more research to accurately determine all of the individuals who control each of the included organizations. In the normal course of business, there are systems in place to ensure control over the flow of information is spread throughout each organization. However, these systems are ultimately controlled by the primary shareholders and directors who hold significant voting rights or influence over the organization.
For our purposes, “Control Persons” represent the number of people who hold significant influence or voting control over the company. In the event where “Control Persons” do not actually hold majority voting control of the organization, we have also included sitting board members in addition to the Control Persons. If the Control Persons held the majority of voting rights and had the power to make changes to the Board without requiring outside assistance, the additional Board Members were not considered in the total number.
Notably, our definition of “control” excludes institutional investors such as BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street that vote proxy on behalf of investors in their ETFs and Mutual Funds. Proxy voting and the concentration of influence among Proxy Advisors is outside the scope of this letter. The moral of the story is that you don’t want to rely on BlackRock’s proxy vote to protect your freedom of speech.
Organizations that receive public funding, such as NPR in the United States and the BBC in the United Kingdom, have not been included in these numbers. They are shown as part of the top 10 primary sources of news, but their ownership structure creates an additional layer of complexity outside of our scope. We won’t even begin to address the BBC, but we have written about the current issues facing NPR, regardless of their ownership structure.
We would hesitate to say that this table is fully accurate and absolute, and we intend to further refine this claim with further research. The intent is to highlight that control over the media in the U.S. is sufficiently centralized.
Check in for future updates and corrections and further research is conducted.