Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left

A cabal of tech-billionaires is colluding with once-idealistic journalists to create an entirely new media landscape.

Owned is the story of the underreported and growing collusion between new wealth and new journalism. In recent years, right-wing billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and David Sacks have turned to media as their next investment and source of influence. Their cronies are Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi--once known as idealistic and left-leaning voices, now beneficiaries of Silicon Valley largesse. Together, this new alliance aims to exploit the failings of traditional journalism and undermine the very idea of an independent and fact-based fourth estate.

Owned examines how this shift has allowed spectacularly wealthy reactionaries to pursue their ultimate goal of censoring critics so to further their own business interests--and personal vendettas--entirely unimpeded while also advancing a toxic and antidemocratic ideology.

A rich history of the decades-long rise of this new right-wing alternative media takeover, Owned follows the money, names names, and offers a chilling portrait of a future social media and news landscape. It is a biting exposé of journalistic greed, tech-billionaire ambition, and a lament for a disappearing free press.

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.