Busting Myths on Foreign Media Ownership as TikTok Ban Looms

It’s taken four years, but the push to ban TikTok is moving at lightning speed—which will continue until it comes to a dead halt sometime in the near future. Today’s lopsided vote in the House of Representatives on the ban-or-sell TikTok bill moves the battle to the Senate, where its prospects are uncertain. Let’s assume it passes in that chamber and then gets signed by President Joe Biden. The next stop is likely to be a court case initiated by TikTok, which will almost certainly put this issue on hold for some time to come. So don’t hold your breath for a resolution anytime soon.

In the meantime, the debate over a TikTok ban is generating some fact-challenged commentary among venture capitalists over U.S. rules on foreign ownership of media. Upfront Ventures’ Mark Suster, for instance, tweeted today, “We have never allowed foreign entities to control our media,” apparently unaware that a German company, Axel Springer, owns Business Insider and Politico. Suster was responding to Keith Rabois, who tweeted that Rupert Murdoch became a U.S. citizen “because the US didn’t even allow Australians…to own a NYC newspaper.” Actually, Murdoch owned several newspapers in the U.S. for more than a decade before he became an American citizen, which he did when he was buying the Fox TV station group. Rabois seemed to be thinking of foreign ownership laws affecting television stations, which is what prompted Murdoch’s citizenship change in 1985.