Wow. According to the journalist and historian Eoin Higgins, right wing tech billionaires like Marc Andreessen, David Sacks and Peter Thiel have “bought” prominent anti establishment journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi. That’s the highly provocative thesis at the heart of his new book Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left. While I’m no great fan of the Greenwald/Taibbi school of paranoid anti-establishment journalism, I’m not totally convinced. After all, does working for an online publication partially funded by Thiel like Rumble really mean that you’ve been bought by him? But WTF do I know? Listen to Higgins for yourself. He certainly makes an interesting case for this highly controversial thesis.
Here are the 5 KEEN ON takeaways for our conversation withHiggins:
Tech Billionaire Influence on Media: The conversation centers on how right-wing tech billionaires like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Marc Andreessen have invested in and influenced alternative media platforms (like Rumble and Substack) as a response to what they perceived as hostile coverage from traditional media outlets.
Evolution of Left-Wing Voices: Higgins discusses how prominent left-wing journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi have shifted their political positioning over time, with their audience and platform choices moving increasingly rightward. He argues this shift “coincided” (LOL) with opportunities and financial support from right-wing tech platforms.
The Rumble Example: Higgins points to Rumble (a conservative YouTube alternative backed by Peter Thiel) hiring Glenn Greenwald as a concrete example of how tech billionaires have influenced media voices. He sees this as a "smoking gun" of how financial relationships can shape media alignment.
Complex Media Ownership: The discussion highlights the nuanced relationship between media ownership and editorial independence. While Higgins critiques certain ownership patterns, he acknowledges that journalists can maintain independence even within organizations owned by billionaires (citing examples from The Washington Post and other mainstream outlets).
Impact on Alternative Media: Higgins argues there's been a broader "takeover of alternative media" by tech billionaires, but he's careful to frame this not as a conspiracy but rather as a confluence of factors involving tech industry resentment of critical media coverage, financial opportunities, and changing political alignments.
Eoin Higgins is a journalist and historian from New England. His work has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Intercept, The New Republic, The Nation, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), Common Dreams, The Outline, Splinter, Deadspin, and many others. Additionally he writes for Morning Brew’s tech newsletter, IT Brew, with an audience of nearly 100,000. He can be found at his Twitter account (@eoinhiggins_, nearly 80,000 followers), where he engages regularly with a large audience on tech and U.S. and world politics.
Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.
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