This past Thursday night, as rumors swirled regarding the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, noting the confusion and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Even though it is by no means a perfect news source, her words resonated for a lot of people. It remains one of the outlets where you can find grounded and generally dependable reporting – particularly during fast-moving events such as the one taking place close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable Situation During a High-Stakes Tug-of-War
Yet the news network, now middle-aged, finds itself in a precarious situation as two huge media corporations vie for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the future of CNN has been drawn into a high-risk game of mergers and acquisitions, rather than as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“This is yet another example of the fundamental flaws with origins in decades of regulatory actions,” stated Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The speculation about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a larger point.
“It gets presented as a business story with influential figures as the protagonists, but there is hardly any discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard added.
A Further Layer: The Former President
The CNN scenario is further muddied by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his main “fake news” adversary.
Recall the chants of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his team's disciplinary revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now claims that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will insulate him from journalistic oversight. That is one reason why he appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
There is a basis to favor that company 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.
The company, owner of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that historic news network.
A Future of Continued Instability
Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a standalone company. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a guarantee of stability. That structure could pave the way for CNN for another sale. There is no finish line.
If you ask Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is illegal, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance recently argued that competition laws should prohibit both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be bad for the country, and both should be opposed by regulators,” Wu recently wrote.
The Fundamental Challenge and a Path Forward
Whatever happens regarding CNN, the larger issue remains.
“The present media landscape is a highly structure that undermines democracy, but we ought not succumb to learned helplessness,” Pickard noted. Policy decisions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this hyper-commercialized monster, and different policy decisions can tackle it.
Is this likely in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Change is very unlikely now, but that doesn’t mean it will never happen.
Initiatives that strengthen independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, subsidize public media, and prevent the accumulation of media power in too few hands are not only possible – they are essential for a robust democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations such as CNN shouldn’t be pieces in the newest merger game.
