This past Thursday night, while unconfirmed reports spread about a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Even though it is by no means a impeccable news source, her words seemed accurate to many. It remains one of the outlets where one can locate fact-based and generally dependable reporting – especially during fast-moving events such as the one unfolding in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Situation Amid a Business Tug-of-War
Yet CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a uncertain state as two huge media corporations compete for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has become part of a high-risk game of mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what helps the news-consuming public.
“This is yet another example of the deep structural problems with roots in decades of governmental choices,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The conjecture about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a broader point.
“It is often framed as a financial tale with influential figures as the protagonists, but there is hardly any discussion of the public interest,” Pickard explained.
The Additional Factor: The Former President
The network's predicament is made more complex by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his chief “fake news” antagonist.
Think back to the cries of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration's retaliatory revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now claims that CNN needs new ownership. Many see this as a desire for ownership that will insulate him from journalistic oversight. That is one reason why he appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
Trump has reason 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.
The company, owner of CBS News, also recently appointed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that storied news network.
An Outcome of Continued Uncertainty
Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a independent unit. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a guarantee of stability. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for a future sale. The cycle continues.
According to Timothy Wu, much of this is against the law, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should disallow both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be detrimental to the country, and both should be opposed by the government,” Wu argued.
The Core Challenge and a Potential Solution
Whatever happens with this particular battle, the underlying crisis endures.
“What we have now is a highly structure that undermines democracy, but we ought not succumb to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard said. Policy decisions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and different policy decisions can tackle it.
Is this likely in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Reform is highly improbable now, but that should not imply it will be impossible forever.
Initiatives that bolster independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, finance public media, and prohibit the accumulation of media power in very few hands are within reach – they are necessary for a robust democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations like CNN cannot be pieces in the latest merger game.
