He Paved the Way for CNN, Fox News and the Internet. He’s Not Sure We’re Better Off.

Pop quiz: Which media mogul backed Rupert Murdoch’s launch of Fox News, supported Ted Turner’s plans for CNN and helped lay the groundwork for the internet revolution that powers Instagram, TikTok and Google?

Need a hint? He’s also the second-largest private landowner in the United States, with 2.2 million acres.

Of all the captains of industry who have transformed what we read, watch and talk about over the last half century, John Malone is among the most influential and the least understood. An engineer turned omnivorous investor, Mr. Malone, 84, guides his expansive kingdom from a remove, serving as a behind-the-scenes consigliere to the executives at Warner Bros. Discovery, Formula 1, LiveNation, the Atlanta Braves and Sirius XM.

“I would pay a lot of money to avoid a cocktail party,” he said this month, aboard a yacht bobbing in the tranquil slip of his compound in coastal Maine.