This past Thursday night, while unconfirmed reports spread regarding a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, noting the confusion and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While it is by no means a impeccable news source, her words resonated for a lot of people. It is one of the organizations where there exists fact-based and mostly trustworthy reporting – particularly during crises such as the one developing close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious State During a Corporate Tug-of-War
Yet the news network, now middle-aged, finds itself in a precarious state as two massive media conglomerates compete 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 mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“This is yet another example of the fundamental flaws with origins in decades of governmental choices,” noted Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The conjecture about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a more important point.
“It is often framed as a business story with key players as the protagonists, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard said.
The Complicating 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 main “fake news” adversary.
Remember the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his administration's retaliatory revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. Many see this as a desire for 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 unsolicited offer.
He has grounds to like that company more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the pro-Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
Paramount, parent 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.
A Possibility of More Instability
Notably, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a separate entity. Such a move could be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a secure position. That structure could position CNN for a future sale. It never ends.
According to Timothy Wu, much of this is illegal, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should prohibit both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be detrimental to the country, and both should be opposed by anti-trust authorities,” Wu stated.
The Fundamental Challenge and a Path Forward
Regardless of the resolution in this situation, the larger issue persists.
“Our current system is a very structure that undermines democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard said. Government actions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can fix it.
Will that happen in an era where the top communications regulator refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Overhaul is very unlikely now, but that doesn’t mean it will be impossible forever.
Measures that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, subsidize public media, and prevent the concentration of media power in very few hands are within reach – they are vital for a healthy democracy.
In the world of media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations including CNN must not be tools in the most recent acquisition battle.
