September 11 Commission Report - Gnostic Liberation Front

“In 2004, Bagdikian's revised and expanded book, The New Media Monopoly, shows that only 5 huge
corporations -- Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and
Viacom (formerly CBS) -- now control most of the media industry in the U.S. General Electric's NBC
is a close sixth.”
The amount of stock required to control such an organization is relatively small, much
smaller than normally thought required to “control” a corporation:
“Billionaire Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, the world's fifth richest man (as listed by Forbes magazine),
now owns 5.46% of the voting shares of NewsCorp, Rupert Murdoch's media empire that includes Fox
News Channel. The business media—including the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and the rest—
portray this as an act of the Prince's friendship with Murdoch, and an effort to help the media mogul
fight off a hostile takeover attempt by John Malone's Liberty Media, which has acquired 18%. That is
second only to Murdoch's 30% share. Fidelity Management and Research comes in third at 5.8%.
To the casual observer, 5.46% may be small change. Not so. There is potential clout in that 5.46%,
especially since it is ostensibly meant to bail Murdoch out of a jam. Moreover, in most of my years at
CBS, there was never any doubt that the "big boss" was the legendary William S. Paley. And his stake
in what was then the nation's largest media company (the "Tiffany network") was a mere 8%. The rest
included banks, insurance companies and others whose interests were not "hands on" and would not
challenge Paley's supremacy.”
The analysis suggests a very credible position that five individuals with significant stock
could significantly control America’s major media outlets. If the loyalty of five such
individuals was somehow ‘procured’ – it might produce significant control and
significant manipulation of the media. Further evidence suggests that is exactly what has
happened. In fact, theories of their “collusion” parallel those theories of the Bilderberg
group:
“A quiet gathering of the media's top elites to discuss mergers, with a keynote address by the head of
the CIA, escaped mention in the mainstream press. Each year, at the posh ranch of investment banker
THE SEPTEMBER 11 COMMISSION REPORT Page 330