This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation concerning a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, pointing out the conflicting information and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.
Even though CNN is certainly not a perfect news source, her words resonated to many. It stands as one of the outlets where there exists grounded and generally reliable reporting – particularly during crises like the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable State Amid a High-Stakes Struggle
Yet the news network, now middle-aged, finds itself in a vulnerable situation as two huge media corporations compete for 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 benefits the information-seeking public.
“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with roots in decades of regulatory actions,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a academic specializing in media policy at the Penn.
The debate about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a more important point.
“It is often framed as a business story with key players as the central actors, but there is hardly any discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard said.
The Complicating Factor: Political Influence
This situation is complicated by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his chief “fake news” adversary.
Think back to the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now claims that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from criticism and scrutiny. That is a factor in why he seems to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
Trump has reason to prefer that bidder 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, owner of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that historic news network.
A Possibility of More Instability
Significantly, 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 hardly a safe harbor. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for yet another acquisition. The cycle continues.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a lot of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that anti-trust laws should block both deals.
“Either merger would be harmful to the country, and both should be contested by regulators,” Wu recently wrote.
The Fundamental Challenge and a Way Ahead
No matter the outcome in this situation, the underlying crisis endures.
“What we have now is a highly anti-democratic system, but we ought not succumb to learned helplessness,” Pickard emphasized. Policy decisions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this overly commercial monster, and different policy decisions can fix it.
Is this likely in an era where the head of the FCC refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Reform is highly improbable now, but that is not to say it will never happen.
Measures that support independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the concentration of media power in too few hands are not only possible – they are vital for a functioning democracy.
In the world of media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations like CNN shouldn’t be pieces in the latest acquisition battle.
