This past Thursday night, while unconfirmed reports spread regarding the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While CNN is certainly not a flawless news source, her message resonated to many. It stands as one of the organizations where you can find grounded and mostly dependable reporting – especially during fast-moving events like the one taking place in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Situation During a Business Battle
But CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a uncertain situation as two massive media conglomerates compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the future of CNN has turned into a high-stakes game of business acquisition, instead of as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“Here is one more case of the deep structural problems with origins in many years of regulatory actions,” stated Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The speculation about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a larger point.
“It is often framed as a corporate drama with influential figures as the main characters, but there is very little discussion of the common good,” Pickard added.
The Additional Layer: The Former President
The network's predicament is complicated by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his chief “fake news” antagonist.
Recall the chants of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration’s punitive withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will insulate him from negative coverage and examination. That is part of why he seems to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
There is a basis to like that suitor more. For one thing, it is led 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 right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that historic news network.
An Outcome of Further Instability
Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. Such a move could be a relief to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a guarantee of stability. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for another sale. The cycle continues.
According to Timothy Wu, much of this is illegal, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that anti-trust laws should block both deals.
“Either merger would be harmful to the country, and both should be contested by regulators,” Wu recently wrote.
The Core Challenge and a Potential Solution
No matter the outcome with this particular battle, the underlying crisis persists.
“The present media landscape is a highly anti-democratic system, but we must resist learned helplessness,” Pickard said. Regulatory choices – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this hyper-commercialized monster, and revised policy decisions can fix it.
Can reform occur in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair will not confirm that the agency is independent? Overhaul is a distant prospect now, but that doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.
Policies that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, fund public media, and prohibit the consolidation of media power in very few hands are achievable – they are necessary for a functioning democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations including CNN must not be tools in the newest acquisition battle.
