This past Thursday night, while unconfirmed reports spread concerning a shooting at Brown University, the network's Kaitlan Collins took to social media, pointing out the conflicting information and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a flawless news source, her words rang true to many. It stands as one of the outlets where there exists reality-based 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 Amid a Corporate Tug-of-War
Yet CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious state as two huge media corporations battle over ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the future of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, instead of as a question of what helps the news-consuming public.
“This is yet another example of the fundamental flaws with roots in decades of governmental choices,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The conjecture about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a broader point.
“It gets presented as a business story with influential figures as the main characters, but there is scant discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard said.
The Complicating Factor: The Former President
This situation is complicated by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his primary “fake news” foe.
Think back to the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration’s punitive revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now says that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from journalistic oversight. That is one reason why he appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
There is a basis to like that bidder more. For one thing, it is controlled 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 conservative Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that storied news network.
A Future of Further Turmoil
Significantly, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a separate entity. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a safe harbor. That structure could set up CNN for a future sale. It never ends.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a lot of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance stated that competition laws should disallow both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be bad for the country, and both should be opposed by anti-trust authorities,” Wu argued.
The Bigger Problem and a Path Forward
No matter the outcome in this situation, the underlying crisis persists.
“The present media landscape is a profoundly anti-democratic system, but we shouldn’t give in to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard said. Regulatory choices – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can tackle it.
Is this likely in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Overhaul is highly improbable now, but that is not to say it will not happen in the future.
Initiatives that bolster independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and prohibit the consolidation of media power in a handful of hands are within reach – they are necessary for a functioning democracy.
In the world of media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations like CNN cannot be tools in the most recent corporate chess match.
