Billionaires have something that the rest the world does not have; billions of dollars. What this provides them with is power. Money is power no matter how much you want to believe otherwise. While this might not sound much like something that bothers the average Joe, it’s a huge problem for the media. The media – and we are not talking all of it, only a handful of websites, publications and companies – is not always up to par with their standards. Remember when media mogul Rupert Murdoch was in trouble thanks to the fact that many of his media outlets tend to disobey the law and they make their own set of rules whenever they see fit? He’s a billionaire, and he’s also someone that other billionaires, millionaires, governments and people just do not like thanks to his illicit business practices, his disdain for appropriateness and the fact that he seems to have no problem publishing anything whether he has factual evidence to back it or not.
He and his media company are just one of the many examples of the media taking things too far and angering the world’s most powerful people. Many billionaires are upset with the media points out things that they wish they did not, reports without fact-checking, and really just does anything that might not seem favorable to the world’s wealthiest men and women. Gawker is a site that is currently in some serious trouble thanks to the fact that it published some pretty inappropriate things about former wrestler Hulk Hogan. The site has been ordered to pay the former star $140 million, and it will likely be a major financial strain for the company. As if that was not bad enough, now it’s been announced that PayPal billionaire Peter Thiel is on board with trying to take down the site and turn it to dust. He’s not the first, and he certainly will not be the last, billionaire to take on the media.
Read on to find out who else has some issues.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal vs. Forbes
Every year, Forbes release a list of the wealthiest people in the world. in 2013, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia was very upset that Forbes listed his net worth at only $20 billion. His net worth was actually $29.6 billion. He filed a defamation suit, stating that the U.S. magazine listed him at number 26 on the list of wealthiest people because it is biased against Middle Eastern businesses.
Jeff Greene vs. The Tampa Bay Times
Back in 2010, Jeff Green, a real estate billionaire, read some articles in the Tampa Bay Times that stated he was partying on some yachts and that he was involved in the sales effort of a condo complex. This was during the time he was making a bid to become a U.S. Senator, and he was not happy. Greene was not flattered by the reports, and he spent 6 years in an ugly court battle with the newspaper, which was recently settled in court for an amount that was not made public. However, the TBT editor released a statement that says, “On the central dispute, the Times does not retract or correct our coverage, nor will we limit any future reporting.”
Steve Wynn vs. Lowell Bergman
He is a billionaire casino magnate, and he allegedly had a documentary killed. The documentary was created by Lowell Bergman, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Called “Bigger than Vegas,” the documentary allegedly was killed after Steven Wynn and Sheldon Adelson made noise that they would file a lawsuit about the documentary if it was released. Apparently, Steve Wynn had already sued a man by the name of James Chanos for remarks he made about Wynn at Lowell Bergman’s annual investigative reporting symposium in 2014. This allegedly caused Bergman to fear that the same would happen if he allowed the documentary to be released, so he postponed it, changed it and eventually cancelled it for fear that the billionaire would have something to say about it.
“We at the Investigative Reporting Program believe that the story was killed for two reasons – their editorial concerns and their concerns abou the legal consequences,” is what Bergman stated at the same symposium a year later. Apparently, the company producing the documentary was fearful that they would be the subject of a long, expensive, and harrowing lawsuit if they went forward with airing it to the public and decided that the risk of doing that far outweighed the rewards that might come from it. They documentary was killed.
Donald Trump vs. Timothy O’Brien
Author Timothy O’Brien published a book called TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald. In the book, he stated that the current presidential hopeful was worth somewhere between $150 million and $250 million, so The Donald sued him for defamation, citing that the author called him a millionaire when he is actually a billionaire. Trump called O’Brien’s words “actual malice,” and then later went on to say that libel laws “have never been fair,” and that he hopes to change that. He did not win the lawsuit, which was reportedly worth more than $5 million. However, it’s become part of his presidential campaign to change libel laws so that anyone can sue over unflattering reporting on their behalf.
The Koch Brothers vs. Jane Mayer
She’s a writer for the New Yorker who published a story several years ago about billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch and how they were involved in the Tea Party Movement. It was later alleged that she was informed by other reporters that the brothers hired a private investigator to follow her around, dig into her past and discredit her. She was then informed by her editor that she was being accused of plagiarism, though it was false, after evidence was planted. She believes that it is the Koch brothers behind her troubles since the article was published in 2010.
