This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation regarding the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, noting the confusion and pointing viewers to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Although the network is hardly a perfect news source, her words resonated to many. It is one of the broadcasters where there exists grounded and mostly trustworthy reporting – particularly during crises such as the one unfolding close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable State Amid a High-Stakes Battle
But CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious state as two massive media empires vie 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 information-seeking public.
“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with roots in many years of governmental choices,” noted Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Pennsylvania University.
The conjecture about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a broader point.
“It gets presented as a financial tale with key players as the protagonists, but there is hardly any discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard explained.
A Further Element: Political Influence
This situation is made more complex by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his chief “fake news” antagonist.
Remember the chants of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his administration's retaliatory suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now claims that the network requires new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will shield him from journalistic oversight. That is one reason why he appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
He has grounds to prefer that company 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 appointed the conservative Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that historic news network.
A Possibility of Continued Uncertainty
Notably, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a safe harbor. That structure could set up CNN for another sale. The cycle continues.
According to Timothy Wu, a lot of this is against the law, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance stated that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be bad for the country, and both should be opposed by regulators,” Wu stated.
The Fundamental Challenge and a Way Ahead
No matter the outcome in this situation, the underlying crisis endures.
“The present media landscape is a highly system hostile to democracy, but we ought not succumb to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard said. Policy decisions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this overly commercial monster, and revised policy decisions can fix it.
Will that happen in an era where the head of the FCC refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Overhaul is very unlikely now, but that should not imply it will be impossible forever.
Measures that support independent news organizations, aid local journalism, subsidize public media, and prohibit the concentration of media power in too few hands are not only possible – they are essential for a functioning democracy.
In the world of media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations like CNN cannot be tools in the most recent merger game.
