This past Thursday night, while unconfirmed reports spread concerning the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a perfect news source, her message seemed accurate to many. It is one of the organizations where there exists grounded and mostly reliable reporting – particularly during crises such as the one unfolding close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Position During a Corporate Struggle
However the news network, now middle-aged, finds itself in a vulnerable state as two massive media corporations compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the destiny of CNN has been drawn into a major game of business acquisition, not as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the fundamental flaws with roots in decades of policy decisions,” 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 – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a broader point.
“It gets presented as a corporate drama with key players as the protagonists, but there is very little discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard added.
The Additional Element: Donald Trump
The CNN scenario is further muddied by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his chief “fake news” antagonist.
Recall the chants of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will protect him from negative coverage and examination. That is part of why he appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
There is a basis to favor that suitor more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the pro-Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
Paramount, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that historic news network.
An Outcome of Continued Uncertainty
Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a independent unit. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a guarantee of stability. That setup could pave the way for CNN for a future sale. There is no finish line.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a lot of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should block both deals.
“Either merger would be bad for the country, and both should be challenged by regulators,” Wu argued.
The Fundamental Challenge and a Potential Solution
No matter the outcome regarding CNN, the bigger problem endures.
“Our current system is a highly anti-democratic system, but we shouldn’t give in to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard said. Regulatory choices – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this profit-obsessed monster, and different policy decisions can address it.
Can reform occur in an era where the head of the FCC refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Reform is very unlikely now, but that should not imply it will be impossible forever.
Measures that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the accumulation of media power in too few hands are not only possible – they are essential for a healthy democracy.
In the world of media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations like CNN shouldn’t be pieces in the latest acquisition battle.
