On Thursday evening, amid swirling speculation concerning a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Even though it is by no means a flawless news source, her words rang true to many. It stands as one of the outlets where you can find reality-based and generally trustworthy reporting – especially during crises such as the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious State Amid a Business Struggle
But CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a precarious state as two giant media empires vie for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the destiny of CNN has turned into a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, instead of as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the fundamental flaws with roots in many years of regulatory actions,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The debate about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a larger point.
“It is often framed as a financial tale with influential figures as the central actors, but there is hardly any discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard said.
The Additional Element: Political Influence
This situation is further muddied by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his chief “fake news” adversary.
Recall the cries of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration’s punitive suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now claims that the network requires new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will protect him from criticism and scrutiny. That is a factor in why he seems to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
Trump has reason to favor 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, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that venerable news network.
An Outcome of More Instability
Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a separate entity. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a guarantee of stability. That structure could pave the way for CNN for a future sale. It never ends.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a lot of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should disallow both deals.
“Either merger would be bad for the country, and both should be opposed by the government,” Wu recently wrote.
The Core Problem and a Path Forward
Regardless of the resolution regarding CNN, the bigger problem endures.
“Our current system is a highly anti-democratic system, but we ought not succumb to learned helplessness,” Pickard noted. Regulatory choices – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this hyper-commercialized monster, and new policy decisions can fix it.
Is this likely 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 not happen in the future.
Measures that bolster independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, subsidize public media, and outlaw the accumulation of media power in a handful of hands are achievable – they are essential for a functioning democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations like CNN shouldn’t be tools in the most recent corporate chess match.
