This past Thursday night, as rumors swirled about the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, highlighting the uncertainty and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a impeccable news source, her statement rang true for a lot of people. It stands as one of the broadcasters where there exists grounded and mostly reliable reporting – notably during crises such as the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.
An Uncertain Position During a Corporate Battle
Yet the news network, now middle-aged, finds itself in a vulnerable situation as two massive media conglomerates battle over ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the destiny of CNN has been drawn into a high-risk game of mergers and acquisitions, rather than as a question of what serves the information-seeking public.
“This represents another instance of the fundamental flaws with origins in many years of regulatory actions,” said Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The conjecture about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses 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 Layer: The Former President
The network's predicament is made more complex by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his chief “fake news” adversary.
Recall the cries of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration’s punitive revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now asserts that CNN needs new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will protect him from journalistic oversight. That is a factor in why he appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
Trump has reason to favor 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.
Paramount, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.
An Outcome of More Turmoil
Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a independent unit. That would be a relief to many at the network, but it’s far from a safe harbor. That structure could position CNN for a future sale. There is no finish line.
If you ask Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is against the law, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance stated that competition laws should disallow both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be bad for the country, and both should be contested by the government,” Wu argued.
The Fundamental Problem and a Path Forward
Whatever happens with this particular battle, the bigger problem persists.
“The present media landscape is a highly system hostile to democracy, but we ought not succumb to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Policy decisions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can fix it.
Can reform occur in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Change is a distant prospect now, but that doesn’t mean it will be impossible forever.
Initiatives that strengthen 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 vital for a functioning democracy.
In the world of media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations such as CNN shouldn’t be tools in the most recent merger game.
