This cartoon is by Jenn Manley Lee and I.
This cartoon was originally posted on Patreon on December 19th, 2025. Just three days later, Bari Weiss, the utterly unqualified head of CBS News, pulled a 60 Minutes story that went against the interests of the Trump administration. Weiss was put in charge of CBS News by right-wing billionaire David Ellison, who’d recently bought CBS’s parent company Paramount.
No other period in history has seen such a rapid and overwhelming buy up of our means of communications by the billionaire class—a fact that raises tough questions about freedom of speech and diversity of opinion. Today, the world’s seven richest individuals are all major media barons, giving them extraordinary control over our media and public square, allowing them to set agendas, and suppress forms of speech they do not approve of. This includes criticisms of them and their holdings, the economic system we live under, and the actions of the United States and Israeli governments.
Robert Reich provides a clear example:
After taking charge of CBS, David Ellison promised to gut DEI policies there, put right-wing hack Kenneth R. Weinstein into a new “ombudsman” role, and made anti-“woke” opinion journalist Bari Weiss editor-in-chief of CBS News, despite her lack of experience in either broadcasting or newsrooms.
The Guardian reports that Larry Ellison has told Trump that if Paramount gains control of Warner Bros. Discovery — which owns CNN — Paramount will fire CNN hosts whom Trump doesn’t like.
Other billionaire media owners have followed the same trajectory.
A news outlet owned by a business mogul will inevitably put the mogul’s business interests first and the public interest second (or worse).
As Reich points out, a better government would block billionaires with obvious conflicts of interest from snapping up news networks. But we certainly don’t have a government that sensible now, and I’m not sure we ever will, even when the Democrats eventually stumble their way back into power.
Lately, for general mainstream news, I’ve been reading The Guardian, which is owned by a trust that exists only to “secure the financial and editorial independence of The Guardian in perpetuity.” Specifically, I read the US edition, which seems less transphobic than their U.K. mothership.
I wouldn’t say it’s a completely objective newspaper – but at least its bias is its own, and unlikely to turn on a dime next month because a billionaire bought it.
I also read other independent news sites – for example, I’m a fan of (most of) Propublica’s work. And I follow individual writers who often specialize in issue areas, like Marisa Kabas and Erin Reed and Jessica Valenti and many others. Let me know in comments if there’s a news source or writer you’ve found especially valuable – I’m always on the look out for new sources that I won’t have time to read nearly as often as they deserve.
The problem is that it all becomes a little much; there are so many excellent individual journalists deserving of support, and I can only support so many. But hopefully, there are many tens of thousands of readers like me (and I imagine most of you), and if we all support a few people hopefully they can all keep going.
TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
This cartoon has four panels.
PANEL 1
Two anchors on a TV news show are talking.
MALE ANCHOR: Breaking news – The sale of this network to a billionaire has been finalized!
FEMALE ANCHOR: Wow! It seems like that’s been happening to all the networks!
PANEL 2
A guy sits in his living room, practicing the guitar, while the news plays on his laptop.
MALE ANCHOR: Not just the networks – all the social media sites too!
FEMALE ANCHOR: So will things be changing here in the newsroom.
PANEL 3
The news plays on a wall-mounted TV in a laundromat.
MALE ANCHOR: Absolutely not! Our news division will remain independent!
FEMALE ANCHOR: You really think so?
PANEL 4
In the TV studio; we are behind the anchors, looking at the cameras and lights. A nervous looking intern winces away from a confident looking executive. The cue card the intern holds says “Of course! In fact, it’s good that journalism is owned by kindly oligarchs with only the public’s best interests at heart!”
MALE ANCHOR: Of course! In fact, it’s good that journalism is owned by kindly oligarchs with only the public’s best interests at heart!
CHICKEN FAT WATCH
“Chicken fat” is ancient cartoonist lingo for fun but unimportant details in the art.
PANEL 1 – In the skyline in the background, a caped superhero flies. The chyron says “Caped Hero Spotted Over Skyline – only the most attentive viewers notice. End times sign?
PANEL 2 – The dog is very attentively watching the newscast. The book the man is looking at is called “Guitar Riffs for a Mid-Life Crisis.”
PANEL 3 – The chyron on TV says “Blah Blah Blah Blah. Blah? Yes, Blah!” and then “this particularly rapid unintelligible patter” (a Gilbert and Sullivan reference).
Signs on the wall: “WANTED: Flier writer. Must be able to write better fliers than this one.” “LOST: Innocence. If found do not return, I worked so hard to get rid of it.” “NOTICE: Soap sludge scraped off the bottom of washers is NOT edible.”
A koi fish is swimming around in the washing machine.
People fear change and they fear the unknown. It is easy to convince people that a public heathcare system will…