Late Thursday, as rumors swirled regarding the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, highlighting the uncertainty and guiding the public to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While CNN is certainly not a perfect news source, her statement rang true for a lot of people. It is one of the organizations where you can find reality-based and largely dependable reporting – particularly during crises such as the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious State During a Corporate Battle
However CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious state as two huge media conglomerates compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the future of CNN has been drawn into a high-risk game of corporate ownership, not as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“This is yet another example of the fundamental flaws with origins in many years of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The conjecture about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a more important point.
“It is often framed as a financial tale with powerful individuals as the central actors, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard added.
The Complicating Element: Donald Trump
The CNN scenario is made more complex by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his primary “fake news” adversary.
Recall the cries of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration’s punitive suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in official meetings.
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 seems to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
He has grounds to prefer that bidder more. For one thing, it is run by David Ellison, son of the ally of Trump 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 editor-in-chief of that historic news network.
A Possibility of More Instability
Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a standalone company. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s hardly a safe harbor. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for a future sale. The cycle continues.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is against the law, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance recently argued that competition laws should block both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be bad for the country, and both should be challenged by anti-trust authorities,” Wu argued.
The Bigger Challenge and a Potential Solution
No matter the outcome regarding CNN, the underlying crisis remains.
“What we have now is a very system hostile to democracy, but we must resist the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard emphasized. Policy decisions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can fix it.
Is this likely in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Reform is very unlikely now, but that doesn’t mean it will never happen.
Initiatives that strengthen independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, finance public media, and outlaw the concentration of media power in a handful of hands are achievable – they are essential for a functioning democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations like CNN cannot be tools in the latest merger game.
