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From KQED.

This is Forum. I'm Rachel Myro-in for Mina Kim.

Billionaire media owners have seismically shifted the media landscape in the U.S. in the last couple of years.

From CBS to the Washington Post, Americans have watched major layoffs, shifts in editorial direction,

and even direct interference raise urgent questions about whether the press can still hold

power accountable. Is the fourth estate buckling beyond repair? Can independent media hold up half the sky for the rest of us?

For how long? I am so thrilled to be talking about all these questions with Matt Gertz,

senior fellow at Media Matters, and Jeremy Barr, media and power reporter at The Guardian.

Welcome to you both. I thought we might start by running down the list of

billionaires, because boy, what a list it is. Number one, Larry Ellison and his son, David. They

purchased Paramount and stalled a conservative apologist Barry Weiss at CBS News to serve like a choke chain on what used to be a pit bull of a newsroom.

Oh my gosh, with storied names like Murrow, Cronkite, 60 Minutes.

Now the Ellison's are on Warner Brothers Discovery, which owns CNN.

Why don't we start with you, Matt? Can we describe this fairly as institutional capture?

I think that's certainly what they are trying to do, yes. I mean, if you look at what we're seeing from the Ellisons. They've moved in and they've started installing Barry Weiss,

who is much more conservative, I think,

...