Good evening, and welcome to this week’s ‘Ragebait.’
Justin Baragona here. In tonight’s edition, I take a deep dive into how David Ellison went from a wannabe actor who starred in a box office bomb that his daddy financed to one of the biggest media tycoons in history – and what that means for the rest of us. Also, are CNN staffers being prematurely optimistic about the fate of the network under Ellison? And why won’t Fox air Trump’s rallies? Plus, I look at the horrific mainstream media coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
He Couldn’t Act. So He Became a Media Mogul Instead
Did you know that a 20-year-old movie that pulled in less than a quarter of its $60 million budget at the box office and holds a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 34% would become the catalyst for one of the largest mass-media consolidations in recent memory?
Of course, it would probably make a little more sense if I pointed out that one of the stars of that film was a 23-year-old nepo baby trust fund kid making his acting debut only after his obscenely wealthy father, who is now the eighth-richest man in the world, put up a huge chunk of cash to help him fund the project.