The revelation that Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel helped fund Hulk Hogan’s defamation lawsuit against the Cayman Islands-based media firm Gawker has elicited howls of condemnation from the serious media.
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The New York Times, for example, published a piece decrying the “aggressive bid by the very wealthy to control the American news media,” which includes references to billionaire media investors such as Sheldon Adelson (Las Vegas Review-Journal), Paul Huntsman (Salt Lake Tribune), Michael Bloomberg (Bloomberg) and Jeff Bezos (Washington Post).
Curiously unmentioned in the piece is Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim, one of the richest men on earth, with a net worth of more than $51 billion. That’s odd, considering that Slim is the largest shareholder of one of the most prominent media firms in the world: The New York Times Company.
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Slim doubled his stake in the Times to 16.8 percent last year after exercising options tied to a $250 million loan he gave the company that helped it survive the financial downturn in 2009. His current stake in the company is valued at more than $300 million.
The Times apparently did not consider this connection “fit to print.” Or maybe they just forgot to mention it? It’s weird, though, especially since one of the concerns raised in the Times piece is that billionaire owners might be exercising undue influence (including censorship) over news coverage.
Much of Slim’s fortune is derived from the mobile phone empire he built in South America through his company América Móvil, whose U.S. subsidiary, TracFone, recently paid $40 million settlement to the Federal Trade Commission after being accused of deceiving customers.
Slim and his network of companies have donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation.
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