Washington DC - When OpenAI acquired the tech podcast TBPN this week, it wasn't just buying a show – it was buying a message.

The move laid bare a strategy that Silicon Valley has been perfecting for years: ditch the tech-sceptics of the traditional press, and build your own media.

TBPN is in many ways a tribute to mainstream news, with co-hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays – both from the venture capital world – presenting a three-hour show daily from a studio in Los Angeles that resembles a business or sports program on a cable news network.

But Coogan and Hays insist they are not journalists, even if they line up interviews with key figures in the industry who offer insightful access to the Silicon Valley world.

The show – like a whole ecosystem of podcasts and media orbiting Silicon Valley today – operates in a world where the benefits of tech for society need no explaining, and tech enthusiasm runs deep.

Fidji Simo, OpenAI's CEO of AGI Deployment, said the acquisition was driven by a need for "constructive conversation about the changes AI creates," and said TBPN would maintain its editorial independence.

The show and its team now fall under the responsibility of OpenAI's public affairs chief Chris Lehane, a veteran Washington lobbyist who made his name handling scandals for the Clinton administration.

"You could read this as OpenAI needing help translating complexity to decision-makers. You could also read it as buying favorable narrative positioning during a period of intense scrutiny. Probably both," said Monica Kahn, CEO of brand advisory Creator Revolution.

"They're buying the layer where interpretation happens," she added on LinkedIn.

The transaction follows a movement spearheaded by Elon Musk and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen in which the most powerful figures in tech are circumventing mainstream news media to avoid an establishment they describe as anti-tech or left-wing.

The roster of shows where Silicon Valley's elite now prefer to make news constitutes a parallel media ecosystem.