Late Thursday, as rumors swirled about a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and guiding the public to her network’s 9pm newscast.
Although the network is hardly a flawless news source, her words rang true for a lot of people. It is one of the organizations where you can find reality-based and mostly dependable reporting – particularly during breaking news situations like the one taking place in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable Position During a Business Battle
But the news network, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a precarious situation as two massive media conglomerates compete for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the fate of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what benefits the information-seeking public.
“Here is one more case of the profound systemic issues with roots in many years of policy decisions,” stated Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The speculation about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a larger point.
“It gets presented as a business story with powerful individuals as the central actors, but there is hardly any discussion of the public interest,” Pickard said.
The Complicating Layer: Donald Trump
The CNN scenario is complicated by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his chief “fake news” adversary.
Remember the chants of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his team's disciplinary suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he seems to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
He has grounds to favor that company 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 installed the conservative Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that historic news network.
An Outcome of Continued Instability
Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a separate entity. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a secure position. That structure could set up CNN for a future sale. The cycle continues.
According to Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is against the law, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should prohibit both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be detrimental to the country, and both should be opposed by regulators,” Wu argued.
The Core Issue and a Potential Solution
Whatever happens with this particular battle, the bigger problem remains.
“What we have now is a profoundly anti-democratic system, but we ought not succumb to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard emphasized. Policy decisions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this overly commercial monster, and revised 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 a distant prospect now, but that is not to say it will not happen in the future.
Policies that bolster independent news organizations, aid local journalism, finance public media, and outlaw the consolidation of media power in a handful of hands are achievable – they are necessary for a healthy democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations including CNN must not be pieces in the most recent acquisition battle.
