This past Thursday night, while unconfirmed reports spread concerning the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, highlighting the uncertainty and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While it is by no means a flawless news source, her words rang true to many. It is one of the organizations where there exists reality-based and largely reliable reporting – especially during crises like the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Situation Amid a High-Stakes Tug-of-War
Yet the news network, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a precarious situation as two huge media empires battle over ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the fate of CNN has turned into a major game of mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“Here is one more case of the fundamental flaws with roots in many years of policy decisions,” stated Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The speculation about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a broader point.
“It gets presented as a corporate drama with key players as the protagonists, but there is scant discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard said.
The Complicating Element: Political Influence
The CNN scenario is further muddied by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his main “fake news” adversary.
Remember the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he seems to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
He has grounds to favor that company more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the pro-Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
The company, parent of CBS News, also recently appointed the conservative Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that historic news network.
A Possibility of Continued Instability
Notably, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a independent unit. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s hardly a safe harbor. That setup could position CNN for another sale. The cycle continues.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a lot of this is illegal, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance stated that competition laws should prohibit both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be harmful to the country, and both should be contested by regulators,” Wu recently wrote.
The Fundamental Problem and a Potential Solution
Whatever happens regarding CNN, the underlying crisis endures.
“Our current system is a highly anti-democratic system, but we shouldn’t give in to learned helplessness,” Pickard said. Regulatory choices – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this profit-obsessed monster, and different policy decisions can fix it.
Can reform occur in an era where the head of the FCC refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Change is a distant prospect now, but that should not imply it will be impossible forever.
Measures that strengthen independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, subsidize public media, and prohibit the concentration of media power in too few hands are not only possible – they are necessary for a functioning democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations including CNN shouldn’t be pieces in the newest acquisition battle.
