Late Thursday, while unconfirmed reports spread about a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a flawless news source, her words seemed accurate to many. It is one of the broadcasters where you can find grounded and largely reliable reporting – notably during crises like the one developing close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Situation Amid a High-Stakes Struggle
Yet the news network, now middle-aged, finds itself in a precarious position as two massive media conglomerates battle over ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the destiny of CNN has turned into a high-risk game of mergers and acquisitions, rather than as a question of what serves the information-seeking public.
“This represents another instance of the profound systemic issues with roots in many years of governmental choices,” noted Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The speculation about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a larger point.
“It is often framed as a business story with powerful individuals as the central actors, but there is very little discussion of the public interest,” Pickard added.
The Additional Factor: The Former President
The CNN scenario is further muddied by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his main “fake news” antagonist.
Remember the cries of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration’s punitive withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from negative coverage and examination. That is a factor in why he seems to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
He has grounds to prefer 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, owner of CBS News, also recently appointed the conservative Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that historic news network.
A Future of Further Turmoil
Significantly, if Netflix wins, 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 arrangement could position CNN for a future sale. It never ends.
According to Timothy Wu, a lot of this is illegal, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that anti-trust laws should prohibit both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be detrimental to the country, and both should be challenged by the government,” Wu recently wrote.
The Fundamental Issue and a Potential Solution
Regardless of the resolution regarding CNN, the bigger problem persists.
“The present media landscape is a profoundly system hostile to democracy, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard said. Regulatory choices – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this hyper-commercialized monster, and revised policy decisions can tackle it.
Will that happen in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Overhaul is a distant prospect now, but that is not to say it will never happen.
Policies that support independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, subsidize public media, and outlaw the consolidation of media power in too few hands are achievable – they are essential for a robust democracy.
Regarding media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations like CNN must not be pieces in the most recent acquisition battle.
