This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation about the Brown University gunman, 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 perfect news source, her statement rang true to many. It stands as one of the broadcasters where you can find grounded and generally trustworthy reporting – especially during breaking news situations such as the one unfolding close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
An Uncertain Situation Amid a Business Tug-of-War
Yet the news network, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a vulnerable situation as two giant media empires battle over ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the destiny of CNN has become part of 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 deep structural problems with roots in many years of regulatory actions,” noted Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Penn.
The speculation about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a broader point.
“It gets presented as a business story with powerful individuals as the main characters, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard added.
The Additional Layer: Political Influence
The network's predicament is made more complex by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his main “fake news” antagonist.
Think back to the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now claims that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from negative coverage and examination. That is one reason why he seems to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
He has grounds to like that bidder more. For one thing, it is run by David Ellison, son of the ally of 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 storied news network.
A Possibility of Continued Instability
Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a standalone company. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a safe harbor. That structure could position CNN for yet another acquisition. There is no finish line.
According to Timothy Wu, a lot of this is against the law, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance stated that competition laws should prohibit both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be harmful to the country, and both should be opposed by anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.
The Core Challenge and a Way Ahead
Regardless of the resolution in this situation, the underlying crisis persists.
“What we have now is a profoundly system hostile to democracy, but we ought not succumb to learned helplessness,” Pickard said. Government actions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can address it.
Is this likely in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Reform is a distant prospect now, but that doesn’t mean it will never happen.
Measures that support independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the consolidation of media power in a handful of hands are within reach – they are vital for a healthy democracy.
Regarding media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations including CNN cannot be tools in the newest acquisition battle.
