Writers Guild calls on regulators to curb billionaire media control after alleged ‘Musk’ film censorship campaign

On Saturday, the Writers Guild of America East and the Writers Guild of America West issued a joint statement backing members Alex Gibney and Michael J. Palmer, according to The Wrap. They described the filmmakers’ new documentary as “an in-depth examination of Elon Musk based on his own words and firsthand accounts of his actions.” The guilds said the project had encountered barriers when trying to promote itself on social media.

The statement claimed that the film ran into limits on advertising across major platforms. “Over the last several weeks, MUSK has been subject to an overt censorship campaign by tech platforms,” it said. According to the guilds, every major social media platform had initially prohibited or restricted advertisements for the film.

TikTok contacted the film’s theatrical distributor, Bleecker Street, and informed the company that advertising for the film was “permanently banned” the week before its release. The guilds said the platform only lifted that ban after the film’s opening weekend. They presented the sequence of decisions as evidence of the difficulties the documentary faced in reaching audiences through paid promotion.

Guild outlines advertising bans and connections to concentrated ownership

The Writers Guild noted that TikTok is controlled in the U.S. by Larry Ellison. They stated that Ellison provided significant financial backing for his son David Ellison’s combination of Paramount-Warner Bros into Skydance Media. The statement added that Skydance Media owns HBO Max and holds the broadcast and streaming rights to MUSK.

The guilds also referenced a development involving the subject of the film. They said that this week Elon Musk announced he was invested nearly $1 billion in Skydance. The statement placed this announcement alongside the details about TikTok’s ownership and Skydance’s rights to the documentary.

The guilds then turned to broader ownership patterns in the industry. They stated that “a small handful of billionaires now own virtually every major media company, news outlet and social media platform.” They said this concern was first raised when the union sought legal action against the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger.

According to the statement, the present situation is “demonstrating how this unchecked concentration over our news and media threatens democratic discourse.” The guilds linked the advertising restrictions on the film to that concentration of control. They treated the platform decisions and ownership ties as an illustration of the issues they had previously flagged.

The statement ended with a call for official action. “We stand with our members, and we continue to call on policymakers, elected leaders and federal and state regulators to enforce our antitrust laws, which were designed to prevent this malignant concentration and control,” the guilds said. The joint release framed the alleged censorship campaign against the MUSK film as a reason to enforce existing rules on media ownership.