On Thursday evening, amid swirling speculation concerning an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, highlighting the uncertainty and pointing viewers to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Even though the network is hardly a impeccable news source, her words seemed accurate to many. It remains one of the organizations where you can find reality-based and mostly trustworthy reporting – notably during breaking news situations such as the one unfolding in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable State During a High-Stakes Struggle
Yet CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a uncertain state as two huge media corporations compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a high-risk game of business acquisition, rather than as a question of what helps the news-consuming public.
“This is yet another example of the profound systemic issues with origins in decades of policy decisions,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Pennsylvania University.
The conjecture about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a larger point.
“It gets presented as a financial tale with powerful individuals as the protagonists, but there is very little discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard said.
A Further Layer: The Former President
The network's predicament is complicated by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his primary “fake news” adversary.
Remember the chants of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration's retaliatory revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now claims that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from negative coverage and examination. That is part of why he seems to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
He has grounds to prefer that bidder more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the ally of Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
The company, owner of CBS News, also recently placed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that venerable news network.
A Future of Continued Instability
Significantly, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a standalone company. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s hardly a secure position. That arrangement could set up CNN for another sale. It never ends.
According to Timothy Wu, a lot of this is illegal, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should block both deals.
“Either merger would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by regulators,” Wu recently wrote.
The Core Issue and a Potential Solution
No matter the outcome with this particular battle, the larger issue endures.
“Our current system is a very structure that undermines democracy, but we ought not succumb to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard noted. Government actions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and different policy decisions can fix it.
Will that happen in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Change is very unlikely now, but that doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.
Policies that strengthen independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and prohibit the accumulation of media power in too few hands are not only possible – they are vital for a healthy democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations such as CNN must not be pawns in the latest merger game.
