On Thursday evening, as rumors swirled regarding an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Even though CNN is certainly not a impeccable news source, her words seemed accurate to many. It is one of the outlets where one can locate fact-based and largely trustworthy reporting – particularly during fast-moving events such as the one taking place near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious State During a High-Stakes Struggle
Yet CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious position as two huge media empires vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a high-stakes game of business acquisition, instead of as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with origins in many years of regulatory actions,” stated Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a academic specializing in media policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The conjecture about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a broader point.
“It gets presented as a financial tale with key players as the central actors, but there is scant discussion of the public interest,” Pickard explained.
A Further Layer: The Former President
The network's predicament is made more complex by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his primary “fake news” antagonist.
Think back to the chants of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his team's disciplinary revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring 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 journalistic oversight. That is part of why he seems to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
Trump has reason to like that suitor more. For one thing, it is controlled by David Ellison, son of the Trump-friendly Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
Paramount, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that historic news network.
A Possibility of Continued Turmoil
It is important to note, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. This might be a relief to many at the network, but it’s hardly a guarantee of stability. That setup could position CNN for yet another acquisition. The cycle continues.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a lot of this is illegal, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance recently argued that competition laws should disallow both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be harmful to the country, and both should be opposed by anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.
The Fundamental Problem and a Way Ahead
Regardless of the resolution in this situation, the underlying crisis remains.
“What we have now is a profoundly anti-democratic system, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Government actions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this profit-obsessed monster, and different policy decisions can address it.
Can reform occur in an era where the top communications regulator will not confirm that the agency is independent? Change is a distant prospect now, but that doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.
Policies that bolster independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and prohibit the concentration of media power in a handful of hands are within reach – they are essential for a robust democracy.
In the world of media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations like CNN shouldn’t be pawns in the most recent corporate chess match.
