On Thursday evening, as rumors swirled regarding an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, noting the confusion and guiding the public to her network’s 9pm newscast.
Even though CNN is certainly not a perfect news source, her words seemed accurate to many. It remains one of the organizations where one can locate grounded and mostly reliable reporting – especially during fast-moving events such as the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Situation During a Corporate Battle
However the news network, now middle-aged, finds itself in a vulnerable position as two giant media corporations compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the destiny of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of corporate ownership, rather than as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“Here is one more case of the profound systemic issues with origins in many years of regulatory actions,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Penn.
The speculation about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a larger point.
“The narrative is crafted as a business story with key players as the main characters, but there is very little discussion of the common good,” Pickard explained.
The Additional Layer: Political Influence
The network's predicament is made more complex by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his main “fake news” antagonist.
Remember the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his administration's retaliatory suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will insulate him from criticism and scrutiny. That is one reason why he appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
Trump has reason to like that suitor 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 right-leaning Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.
A Future of More Instability
Notably, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a standalone company. This might be a relief to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a safe harbor. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for a future sale. The cycle continues.
According to Timothy Wu, a lot of this is illegal, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance recently argued that anti-trust laws should block both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by the government,” Wu recently wrote.
The Bigger Problem and a Potential Solution
Regardless of the resolution with this particular battle, the larger issue endures.
“What we have now is a very anti-democratic system, but we must resist the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard noted. Policy decisions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this overly commercial monster, and new policy decisions can tackle it.
Will that happen in an era where the head of the FCC refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Overhaul is a distant prospect now, but that is not to say it will not happen in the future.
Measures that strengthen independent news organizations, aid local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the consolidation of media power in a handful of hands are not only possible – they are necessary for a robust democracy.
Regarding media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations including CNN must not be tools in the most recent acquisition battle.
