On Thursday evening, as rumors swirled about an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, noting the confusion and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While CNN is certainly not a flawless news source, her message rang true for a lot of people. It is one of the organizations where one can locate grounded and largely trustworthy reporting – particularly during crises such as the one developing close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Position Amid a Business Battle
Yet the news network, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious situation as two huge media empires compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has become part of a high-risk game of mergers and acquisitions, instead of as a question of what benefits the information-seeking public.
“Here is one more case of the deep structural problems with roots in many years of governmental choices,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Pennsylvania University.
The speculation about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a more important point.
“The narrative is crafted as a business story with influential figures as the protagonists, but there is very little discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard explained.
The Additional Element: Donald Trump
The network's predicament is complicated by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his chief “fake news” adversary.
Think back to the cries of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will protect him from journalistic oversight. That is one reason why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
There is a basis to favor that suitor more. For one thing, it is run by David Ellison, son of the pro-Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
Paramount, owner of CBS News, also recently appointed the conservative Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that historic news network.
A Possibility of More Turmoil
Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a standalone company. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a safe harbor. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for yet another acquisition. It never ends.
If you ask Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is against the law, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should block both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by the government,” Wu stated.
The Core Problem and a Way Ahead
No matter the outcome regarding CNN, the larger issue endures.
“The present media landscape is a very system hostile to democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard emphasized. Regulatory choices – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can address it.
Will that happen in an era where the head of the FCC refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Change is very unlikely now, but that should not imply it will be impossible forever.
Measures that strengthen independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and prohibit the concentration of media power in very few hands are within reach – they are essential for a robust democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations including CNN shouldn’t be pawns in the newest acquisition battle.
