This past Thursday night, as rumors swirled regarding a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While CNN is certainly not a flawless news source, her words resonated for a lot of people. It is one of the outlets where one can locate grounded and mostly trustworthy reporting – particularly during crises such as the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Situation During a Corporate Battle
However CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a vulnerable position as two massive media empires compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has turned into a high-risk game of business acquisition, rather than as a question of what helps the information-seeking public.
“Here is one more case of the deep structural problems with roots in decades of governmental choices,” stated Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Pennsylvania University.
The speculation about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a larger point.
“The narrative is crafted as a corporate drama with influential figures as the main characters, but there is scant discussion of the public interest,” Pickard said.
The Complicating Layer: Donald Trump
The network's predicament is further muddied by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his chief “fake news” adversary.
Think back to the chants of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration's retaliatory suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
He has grounds to favor that company more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the Trump-friendly Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
The company, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the conservative Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that storied news network.
A Possibility of Further Uncertainty
Notably, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a separate entity. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s hardly a secure position. That setup could set up CNN for a future sale. It never ends.
If you ask Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is against the law, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance stated that anti-trust laws should prohibit both deals.
“Either merger would be harmful to the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.
The Fundamental Challenge and a Way Ahead
No matter the outcome in this situation, the bigger problem remains.
“What we have now is a profoundly anti-democratic system, but we shouldn’t give in to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard emphasized. Policy decisions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this overly commercial monster, and revised policy decisions can address it.
Is this likely in an era where the head of the FCC will not confirm that the agency is independent? Change is a distant prospect now, but that doesn’t mean it will be impossible forever.
Measures that bolster independent news organizations, aid local journalism, finance public media, and outlaw the consolidation of media power in too few hands are within reach – they are vital for a healthy democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations such as CNN shouldn’t be tools in the latest acquisition battle.
