This past Thursday night, while unconfirmed reports spread regarding an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, noting the confusion and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.
Even though the network is hardly a flawless news source, her words seemed accurate to many. It remains one of the broadcasters where you can find grounded and generally reliable reporting – particularly during breaking news situations such as the one unfolding in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious State Amid a Corporate Tug-of-War
Yet the news network, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a uncertain situation as two huge media empires compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the future of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what helps the news-consuming public.
“Here is one more case of the fundamental flaws with origins in decades of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The speculation about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a broader point.
“The narrative is crafted as a business story with powerful individuals as the main characters, but there is hardly any discussion of the public interest,” Pickard explained.
The Complicating Layer: Donald Trump
The CNN scenario is complicated by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his chief “fake news” antagonist.
Remember the shouts 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 press briefings.
Trump now claims that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from criticism and scrutiny. That is one reason why he appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
Trump has reason to prefer that bidder more. For one thing, it is controlled by David Ellison, son of the pro-Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
The company, parent of CBS News, also recently placed the conservative Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that venerable news network.
A Future of More Instability
Notably, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a standalone company. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a safe harbor. That setup could set up CNN for yet another acquisition. There is no finish line.
According to Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is illegal, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance recently argued that anti-trust laws should block both deals.
“Either merger would be bad for the country, and both should be opposed by the government,” Wu stated.
The Bigger Issue and a Potential Solution
No matter the outcome regarding CNN, the bigger problem remains.
“Our current system is a very structure that undermines democracy, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Policy decisions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can fix it.
Will that happen in an era where the head of the FCC will not confirm that the agency is independent? Change is a distant prospect now, but that is not to say it will never happen.
Initiatives that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, fund public media, and prohibit the concentration of media power in a handful of hands are achievable – they are vital for a robust democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations including CNN cannot be tools in the newest merger game.
