Late Thursday, as rumors swirled concerning the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a impeccable news source, her words resonated for numerous observers. It remains one of the organizations where there exists grounded and mostly reliable reporting – particularly during breaking news situations such as the one taking place in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
An Uncertain Position Amid a Business Tug-of-War
But the news network, now middle-aged, finds itself in a vulnerable situation as two massive media corporations battle over ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the future of CNN has become part of a high-risk game of corporate ownership, instead of as a question of what helps the news-consuming public.
“Here is one more case of the deep structural problems with roots in many years of regulatory actions,” noted Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The conjecture about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a larger point.
“It is often framed as a financial tale with influential figures as the main characters, but there is scant discussion of the common good,” Pickard said.
The Additional Factor: Donald Trump
The CNN scenario is made more complex by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his primary “fake news” foe.
Recall the chants of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration's retaliatory suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now claims that CNN needs new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will protect him from journalistic oversight. That is part of why he seems to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
There is a basis to like that company more. For one thing, it is controlled by David Ellison, son of the Trump-friendly Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
The company, owner of CBS News, also recently appointed the conservative Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that venerable news network.
An Outcome of More Uncertainty
It is important to note, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a independent unit. Such a move could be a relief to many at the network, but it’s far from a guarantee of stability. That arrangement could set up CNN for yet another acquisition. There is no finish line.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance recently argued that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.
“Either merger would be bad for the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.
The Bigger Problem and a Way Ahead
Regardless of the resolution in this situation, the underlying crisis persists.
“Our current system is a highly system hostile to democracy, but we ought not succumb to learned helplessness,” Pickard said. Regulatory choices – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this hyper-commercialized monster, and revised policy decisions can tackle it.
Will that happen in an era where the head of the FCC refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Change is a distant prospect now, but that is not to say it will not happen in the future.
Initiatives that bolster independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the consolidation of media power in too few hands are not only possible – they are vital for a healthy democracy.
In the world of media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations including CNN cannot be pieces in the most recent acquisition battle.
