On Thursday evening, amid swirling speculation regarding the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While CNN is certainly not a perfect news source, her words resonated for a lot of people. It stands as one of the broadcasters where you can find grounded and mostly dependable reporting – particularly during crises like the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable State Amid a Corporate Tug-of-War
Yet CNN, now middle-aged, finds itself in a uncertain state as two huge media conglomerates compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the destiny of CNN has turned into a major game of business acquisition, rather than as a question of what helps the information-seeking public.
“Here is one more case of the deep structural problems with origins in many years of policy decisions,” noted Victor Pickard, author 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? – misses a broader point.
“It is often framed as a corporate drama with influential figures as the main characters, but there is scant discussion of the public interest,” Pickard added.
A Further Factor: Donald Trump
This situation is further muddied by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his primary “fake news” antagonist.
Recall the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration’s punitive revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he seems to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
There is a basis to favor that suitor 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.
Paramount, parent of CBS News, also recently placed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that historic news network.
A Possibility of Continued Instability
Notably, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a independent unit. This might be a relief to many at the network, but it’s far from a guarantee of stability. That arrangement could set up CNN for another sale. It never ends.
According to Timothy Wu, a lot of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should disallow both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be bad for the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu argued.
The Fundamental Challenge and a Path Forward
Whatever happens regarding CNN, the bigger problem endures.
“What we have now is a highly system hostile to democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to learned helplessness,” Pickard noted. Government actions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and different policy decisions can fix it.
Can reform occur in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Reform is a distant prospect now, but that should not imply it will not happen in the future.
Measures that support independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, subsidize public media, and prevent the consolidation of media power in very few hands are achievable – they are essential for a functioning democracy.
In the world of media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations including CNN must not be pieces in the latest corporate chess match.