This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation regarding an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, pointing out the conflicting information and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.
Even though CNN is certainly not a perfect news source, her words rang true to many. It stands as one of the outlets where one can locate grounded and generally reliable reporting – particularly during fast-moving events such as the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious State Amid a High-Stakes Struggle
However the news network, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious position as two huge media corporations battle over ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the fate of CNN has become part of a high-risk game of business acquisition, not as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the profound systemic issues with roots in many years of policy decisions,” noted Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The debate about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a more important point.
“It gets presented as a business story with influential figures as the protagonists, but there is scant discussion of the public interest,” Pickard said.
The Additional Layer: The Former President
The CNN scenario is further muddied by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his main “fake news” adversary.
Think back to the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his team's disciplinary suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from journalistic oversight. That is a factor in why he seems to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
Trump has reason to favor that company more. For one thing, it is led 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 installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that storied news network.
A Future of More Turmoil
It is important to note, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a independent unit. That would be a relief to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a secure position. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for another sale. It never ends.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is against the law, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should block both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by regulators,” Wu recently wrote.
The Core Challenge and a Path Forward
No matter the outcome regarding CNN, the bigger problem remains.
“The present media landscape is a very structure that undermines democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard said. Government actions – dating back to 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 Federal Communications Commission chair refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Overhaul is a distant prospect now, but that is not to say it will never happen.
Policies that bolster independent news organizations, aid local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the concentration of media power in very few hands are achievable – they are necessary for a functioning democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations such as CNN must not be pawns in the newest merger game.
