Warren Buffett
BH Media Group serves communities in 10 states. We own and operate 30 daily newspapers along with their digital sites. BH Media also publishes 47 paid weekly newspapers and 32 other print products.
If you ever wondered what billionaires do with their money, besides buying 600-foot yachts and $100 million NYC penthouses – think media and the power it offers to often otherwise shallow money-grubbers.
A certain exception to the stupidity charge is Warren Buffet, 89, who has managed to keep a low-key public image and enjoy a relatively modest personal life. What Buffett does with his money is accumulate power by investing in our largest corporations.
When it comes to rich folks owning your company, you can bet employees are not only grateful for their jobs, but also willing to suspend belief and think they agree with the owner’s whims and even political stances.
Nobody wants to make the boss unhappy, not even editors of newspapers and producers of tv shows.
Which brings me to newspapers and Buffett’s holdings.
Buffett has long been a big shot in the publishing world, and his Berkshire Hathaway (BH) owned 1.7 million shares in Graham Holdings, the Washington Post’s parent company. In 2013 the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, bought the Post, and made a deal with Buffett, the third richest man in the world, to divest BH shares.
Buffett then bought Media General (MG), a newspaper group with influence in political swing states like Virginia (30 papers) and nine papers that cover the “mid-south,” which includes Florida. All together, he has 77 newspapers in the MG group.
Other newspapers in the Buffett stable include the Buffalo News and Omaha World-Herald.
While all owners of newspapers say their staff has “editorial independence”, even a NYT Opinion Page writer is smart enough to know that an expose of the boss’ affair with the head of the press room, will not help your career and dismissal is a matter of when, not if.
Editors and reporters toe the line and “consult” with owners before even thinking of humiliating the person who pays their salary.
So, what Buffett believes is important because he is a publishing and corporate powerhouse.
Son of a Congressman, Buffett established the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named after his late wife, and has donated heavily to liberal groups:
- Planned Parenthood: $289 million
- Marie Stopes International: $211 million
- National Abortion Federation: $85 million
- DKT International: $78 million
- Engender Health: $32 million
- Guttmacher Institute: $29 million
- NARAL: $24 million
Regardless of where you stand on the parameters of abortion, the media has been very careful not to involve Buffett in the controversy, despite his huge financial contributions to one side of the issue.:
Out of the 545 stories and interviews with Buffett on ABC, CBS and NBC since 2001, the networks only mentioned his abortion funding once, and even that was only a passing reference to his wife’s support of Planned Parenthood. Not once did the networks mention how much money Buffett poured into the abortion industry. – Media Research Center
Buffett is sincere in his abortion stance:
Before Roe v. Wade, abortion was only legal in California, so Buffett sponsored the Ecumenical Fellowship – a so-called “church” that would arrange the abortions for women from other states, and plan their travel arrangements. Eventually, the Ecumenical Fellowship merged with the Los Angeles chapter of Planned Parenthood. – Live Action
Not only are newspapers he owns influenced by his politics (he supported Hillary Clinto against Barack Obama), but he may have the most influence on many of America’s leading corporations, their executives and their major shareholders.
Only a fool would like to disagree with an investor, who owns millions, even billions of dollars in their company stock.
There’s no simple way to end the power of the rich over the companies where we work and the newspapers we read – unless we tax the very rich enough to keep them just “medium” rich.
The following are Berkshire Hathaway minority holdings in companies, their stock shares owned by BH & value of Buffett investments ($100 million cutoff):
| Apple | 255,300,329 | $40,271,000,000 |
| Bank of America | 918,919,000 | $22,642,000,000 |
| Wells Fargo and Co | 449,349,102 | $20,706,000,000 |
| The Coca-Cola Company | 400,000,000 | $18,940,000,000 |
| American Express | 151,610,700 | $17,777,870,682 |
| The Kraft Heinz Company | 325,634,818 | $10,609,182,370 |
| U.S. Bancorp | 146,346,999 | $6,688,000,000 |
| JPMorgan Chase & Co. | 50,661,394 | $4,946,000,000 |
| Mondelēz International | 24,669,778 | $4,659,627,669 |
| Bank of New York Mellon Corp | 84,488,751 | $3,977,000,000 |
| Moodys Corp | 24,669,778 | $3,455,000,000 |
| Delta Air Lines, Inc. | 65,535,000 | $3,270,000,000 |
| Goldman Sachs | 18,784,698 | $3,138,000,000 |
| General Motors | 72,269,696 | $2,715,895,176 |
| Verisign Inc | 12,952,745 | $2,509,335,289 |
| Southwest Airlines Co | 47,890,899 | $2,226,000,000 |
| DaVita Inc. | 38,565,570 | $2,020,064,557 |
| Charter Communications, Inc. | 6,789,054 | $1,935,000,000 |
| United Continental Holdings | 21,938,642 | $1,837,000,000 |
| Visa Inc | 10,562,460 | $1,687,986,733 |
| American Airlines | 43,700,000 | $1,483,615,000 |
| Liberty Sirius XM Group Series | 31,090,985 | $1,224,984,809 |
| Mastercard | 4,934,756 | $1,210,544,994 |
| PNC Financial Services Group | 8,263,062 | $1,090,228,400 |
| Costco Wholesale Corporation | 4,333,363 | $1,055,043,890 |
| Phillips 66 | 11,895,842 | $1,020,068,452 |
| Amazon | 483,300 | $904,000,000 |
| Travelers Companies Inc | 5,958,391 | $845,078,596 |
| Sirius XM Holdings Inc. | 137,915,729 | $787,498,813 |
| Red Hat Inc. | 4,175,792 | $771,059,993 |
| Synchrony Financial | 20,803,000 | $715,623,200 |
| Axalta Coating Systems | 24,264,000 | $630,378,720 |
| Teva Pharmaceutical Industries | 43,249,295 | $625,817,299 |
| Store Capital Corp. | 18,621,674 | $617,680,927 |
| Liberty Sirius XM Group Series | 14,860,360 | $582,526,112 |
| Restaurant Brands Int. | 8,438,225 | $565,445,457 |
| Torchmark Corporation | 6,353,727 | $553,663,771 |
| Liberty Global A Class | 19,791,000 | $520,305,390 |
| StoneCo Ltd. | 14,166,748 | $392,277,252 |
| Suncor Energy Inc. | 10,758,000 | $347,913,720 |
| Liberty Global C Class | 7,346,968 | $188,229,320 |
And these are Berkshire’s wholly owned subsidiaries
You can fool nearly all the people... 