This past Thursday night, while unconfirmed reports spread about an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, noting the confusion and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Although it is by no means a perfect news source, her message resonated to many. It stands as one of the outlets where there exists grounded and generally reliable reporting – particularly during crises like the one taking place in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious State Amid a Corporate Struggle
However CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious situation as two huge media empires compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a major game of mergers and acquisitions, rather than as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“This is yet another example of the profound systemic issues with roots in decades of regulatory actions,” noted Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a academic specializing in media policy at the Penn.
The speculation about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a more important point.
“The narrative is crafted as a business story with powerful individuals as the protagonists, but there is hardly any discussion of the public interest,” Pickard said.
A Further Factor: The Former President
The network's predicament is made more complex by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his primary “fake news” adversary.
Think back to the cries of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his administration’s punitive revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now claims that CNN needs new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will shield him from criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he seems to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
He has grounds to favor that company more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the ally of Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
Paramount, owner of CBS News, also recently placed the conservative Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.
A Future of Further Uncertainty
Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. Such a move could be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s hardly a guarantee of stability. That structure could pave the way for CNN for another sale. The cycle continues.
According to Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is illegal, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance recently argued that competition laws should disallow both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be bad for the country, and both should be opposed by regulators,” Wu argued.
The Fundamental Issue and a Way Ahead
Whatever happens regarding CNN, the underlying crisis endures.
“What we have now is a highly system hostile to democracy, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard said. Government actions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this hyper-commercialized monster, and different policy decisions can fix it.
Will that happen 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 doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.
Policies that bolster independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, subsidize public media, and outlaw the accumulation of media power in very few hands are within reach – they are essential for a functioning democracy.
In the world of media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations including CNN shouldn’t be tools in the newest corporate chess match.
