On Thursday evening, while unconfirmed reports spread about an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While CNN is certainly not a impeccable news source, her words resonated for a lot of people. It stands as one of the outlets where you can find grounded and largely trustworthy reporting – especially during crises like the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.
An Uncertain Position During a Business Tug-of-War
Yet the news network, now middle-aged, finds itself in a precarious situation as two giant media empires battle over ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the future of CNN has turned into a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what helps the information-seeking public.
“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with roots 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 conjecture about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a more important point.
“The narrative is crafted as a corporate drama with powerful individuals as the central actors, but there is hardly any discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard explained.
A Further Factor: The Former President
The network's predicament is complicated by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his main “fake news” adversary.
Think back to the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his team's disciplinary revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now claims that the network requires new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will insulate him from criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
He has grounds to favor 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.
Paramount, owner of CBS News, also recently appointed the conservative Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that venerable news network.
A Future of Further Turmoil
Notably, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a independent unit. Such a move could be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a secure position. That structure could set up CNN for a future sale. There is no finish line.
If you ask Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, 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 anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.
The Core Issue and a Path Forward
Regardless of the resolution regarding CNN, the bigger problem persists.
“What we have now is a very structure that undermines democracy, but we must resist learned helplessness,” Pickard noted. Regulatory choices – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this overly commercial monster, and new policy decisions can tackle it.
Will that happen in an era where the head of the FCC will not confirm that the agency is independent? Reform is a distant prospect now, but that doesn’t mean it will be impossible forever.
Initiatives that support independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, subsidize public media, and prevent the consolidation of media power in too few hands are within reach – they are vital for a healthy democracy.
Regarding media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations such as CNN must not be tools in the most recent corporate chess match.
