Late Thursday, as rumors swirled about an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, highlighting the uncertainty and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a impeccable news source, her statement seemed accurate for a lot of people. It is one of the organizations where one can locate grounded and mostly trustworthy reporting – notably during breaking news situations like the one unfolding close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious State During a Corporate Tug-of-War
Yet CNN, now middle-aged, finds itself in a vulnerable situation as two massive media conglomerates battle over ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has turned into a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, instead of as a question of what serves the information-seeking public.
“This is yet another example of the deep structural problems with roots in many years of regulatory actions,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The conjecture about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a more important point.
“It is often framed as a financial tale with influential figures as the central actors, but there is scant discussion of the common good,” Pickard added.
The Complicating Factor: The Former President
The CNN scenario is made more complex by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his main “fake news” foe.
Remember the cries of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his team's disciplinary revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now asserts that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from journalistic oversight. That is one reason why he appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
There is a basis to prefer that suitor more. For one thing, it is controlled 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 appointed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that historic news network.
An Outcome of Further Uncertainty
It is important to note, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a independent unit. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a guarantee of stability. That structure could set up CNN for yet another acquisition. There is no finish line.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should prohibit both deals.
“Either merger would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by the government,” Wu argued.
The Fundamental Challenge and a Path Forward
Whatever happens regarding CNN, the larger issue endures.
“Our current system is a profoundly anti-democratic system, but we must resist learned helplessness,” Pickard emphasized. Regulatory choices – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and different policy decisions can tackle it.
Will that happen in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Change is very unlikely now, but that should not imply it will never happen.
Policies that bolster independent news organizations, aid local journalism, finance public media, and prevent the consolidation of media power in very few hands are within reach – they are vital for a healthy democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations including CNN shouldn’t be pawns in the newest corporate chess match.
