This past Thursday night, as rumors swirled concerning an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.
Although the network is hardly a flawless news source, her message rang true for a lot of people. It remains one of the outlets where one can locate fact-based and generally dependable reporting – particularly during crises like the one taking place close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
An Uncertain State Amid a High-Stakes Battle
But CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a uncertain state as two giant media corporations battle over ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a high-stakes game of business acquisition, rather than as a question of what serves the information-seeking public.
“This represents another instance of the profound systemic issues with roots in decades of regulatory actions,” noted Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a academic specializing in media policy at the Pennsylvania University.
The conjecture about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a larger point.
“It gets presented as a financial tale with powerful individuals as the main characters, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard said.
The Complicating Factor: The Former President
The network's predicament is complicated by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his chief “fake news” antagonist.
Recall the cries of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his administration’s punitive revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now claims that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from negative coverage and examination. That is one reason why he appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
He has grounds to like that bidder more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the pro-Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
Paramount, owner of CBS News, also recently placed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.
A Future of Further Uncertainty
Notably, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a independent unit. Such a move could be a relief to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a safe harbor. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for another sale. There is no finish line.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a lot of this is illegal, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.
“Either merger would be bad for the country, and both should be opposed by anti-trust authorities,” Wu stated.
The Bigger Issue and a Path Forward
No matter the outcome regarding CNN, the underlying crisis endures.
“The present media landscape is a profoundly system hostile to democracy, but we must resist the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard said. Government actions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can fix it.
Will that happen in an era where the top communications regulator will not confirm that the agency is independent? Reform is very unlikely now, but that should not imply it will be impossible forever.
Measures that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, fund public media, and outlaw the accumulation of media power in very few hands are not only possible – they are vital for a functioning democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations including CNN must not be tools in the latest merger game.
