Late Thursday, while unconfirmed reports spread concerning a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, noting the confusion and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Even though CNN is certainly not a perfect news source, her words seemed accurate for a lot of people. It stands as one of the outlets where you can find grounded and mostly trustworthy reporting – especially during crises like the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.
An Uncertain Situation During a Corporate Tug-of-War
Yet the news network, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a precarious situation as two huge media empires vie for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the future of CNN has become part of a major game of mergers and acquisitions, instead of as a question of what benefits the information-seeking public.
“This is yet another example of the deep structural problems with roots in decades of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The conjecture about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a more important point.
“The narrative is crafted as a business story with key players as the main characters, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard added.
The Additional Element: Political Influence
The network's predicament is made more complex by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his primary “fake news” adversary.
Remember the chants of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration's retaliatory suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will insulate him from negative coverage and examination. That is one reason why he seems to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
Trump has reason to prefer that company more. For one thing, it is controlled by David Ellison, son of the pro-Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
Paramount, owner of CBS News, also recently placed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that venerable news network.
A Future of Further Uncertainty
Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a separate entity. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a safe harbor. That arrangement could position CNN for yet another acquisition. The cycle continues.
According to Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that anti-trust laws should prohibit both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be harmful to the country, and both should be contested by regulators,” Wu argued.
The Core Problem and a Potential Solution
Regardless of the resolution in this situation, the larger issue endures.
“What we have now is a highly structure that undermines democracy, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard emphasized. Regulatory choices – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can fix it.
Will that happen in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair will not confirm that the agency is independent? Overhaul is a distant prospect now, but that doesn’t mean it will never happen.
Measures that support independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, subsidize public media, and outlaw the concentration of media power in too few hands are not only possible – they are necessary for a robust democracy.
Regarding media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations including CNN shouldn’t be pieces in the most recent merger game.
