Late Thursday, amid swirling speculation regarding a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a flawless news source, her statement resonated for a lot of people. It is one of the organizations where one can locate grounded and largely trustworthy reporting – particularly during breaking news situations like the one unfolding in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
An Uncertain Position During a Business Battle
Yet the news network, now middle-aged, finds itself in a uncertain position as two huge media corporations battle over ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the destiny of CNN has turned into a high-stakes game of business acquisition, not as a question of what helps the news-consuming public.
“This is yet another example of the deep structural problems with origins in many years of regulatory actions,” 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 – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a more important point.
“It is often framed as a financial tale with influential figures as the main characters, but there is very little discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard explained.
The Additional Factor: Donald Trump
The CNN scenario is made more complex by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his chief “fake news” foe.
Recall the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now claims 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 appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
He has grounds to prefer that suitor more. For one thing, it is run by David Ellison, son of the ally of Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
Paramount, owner of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that venerable news network.
An Outcome of Further Turmoil
Notably, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out 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 arrangement could set up CNN for another sale. There is no finish line.
If you ask Timothy Wu, much of this is against the law, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should prohibit both deals.
“Either merger would be bad for the country, and both should be contested by the government,” Wu stated.
The Core Issue and a Way Ahead
No matter the outcome regarding CNN, the underlying crisis persists.
“The present media landscape is a highly structure that undermines democracy, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard emphasized. Policy decisions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and different policy decisions can address 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 doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.
Measures that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, subsidize public media, and outlaw the concentration of media power in a handful of hands are achievable – they are necessary for a healthy democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations like CNN shouldn’t be pieces in the most recent acquisition battle.
