This past Thursday night, as rumors swirled concerning a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, noting the confusion and pointing viewers to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Although CNN is certainly not a perfect news source, her statement resonated for a lot of people. It stands as one of the broadcasters where one can locate grounded and mostly trustworthy reporting – notably during crises such as the one unfolding close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable Position Amid a Business Tug-of-War
However CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a precarious state as two massive media empires compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the fate of CNN has become part of a major game of corporate ownership, rather than as a question of what helps the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with origins in many years of regulatory actions,” said Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Pennsylvania University.
The speculation about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a more important point.
“It gets presented as a financial tale with key players as the protagonists, but there is hardly any discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard added.
The Complicating Element: Donald Trump
The network's predicament is made more complex by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his primary “fake news” adversary.
Remember the chants of “CNN sucks!” at Trump'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 claims that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from criticism and scrutiny. That is one reason why he seems to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
There is a basis to prefer that bidder more. For one thing, it is run 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 installed the conservative Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that venerable news network.
A Possibility of More Uncertainty
Significantly, 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 guarantee of stability. That structure could set up CNN for another sale. The cycle continues.
According to Timothy Wu, much of this is illegal, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should disallow both deals.
“Either merger would be bad for the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.
The Core Challenge and a Way Ahead
Whatever happens regarding CNN, the larger issue remains.
“Our current system is a very system hostile to democracy, but we ought not succumb to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard noted. Policy decisions – dating back to 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 never happen.
Policies that support independent news organizations, aid local journalism, subsidize public media, and prohibit the consolidation of media power in too few hands are within reach – they are vital for a functioning democracy.
In the world of media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations like CNN shouldn’t be tools in the most recent corporate chess match.
