Late Thursday, as rumors swirled regarding a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, noting the confusion and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Although the network is hardly a perfect news source, her statement resonated for a lot of people. It stands as one of the organizations where one can locate reality-based and generally reliable reporting – notably during breaking news situations like the one taking place near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable Position Amid a High-Stakes Struggle
But CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a precarious state as two massive media corporations battle over ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the future of CNN has turned into a high-stakes game of corporate ownership, not as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“Here is one more case of the deep structural problems with roots in decades of policy decisions,” noted Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The conjecture about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a broader point.
“It is often framed as a corporate drama with influential figures as the main characters, but there is hardly any discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard said.
The Complicating Factor: The Former President
The CNN scenario is further muddied by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his main “fake news” adversary.
Think back to the cries of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his team's disciplinary suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now claims that the network requires new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will protect him from journalistic oversight. That is a factor in why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
He has grounds to prefer 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.
The company, parent of CBS News, also recently placed the conservative Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that venerable news network.
A Possibility of Continued Uncertainty
Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a separate entity. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a safe harbor. That structure could set up CNN for yet another acquisition. It never ends.
If you ask Timothy Wu, a lot of this is illegal, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance recently argued that competition laws should block both deals.
“Either merger would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu argued.
The Bigger Problem and a Potential Solution
No matter the outcome with this particular battle, the underlying crisis remains.
“The present media landscape is a highly anti-democratic system, but we ought not succumb to learned helplessness,” Pickard said. Policy decisions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this overly commercial monster, and revised policy decisions can fix it.
Is this likely in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Reform is a distant prospect now, but that doesn’t mean it will never happen.
Policies that strengthen independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, finance public media, and prohibit the concentration of media power in a handful of hands are achievable – they are vital for a healthy democracy.
In the world of media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations such as CNN must not be pieces in the most recent acquisition battle.
