This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation regarding an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, highlighting the uncertainty and guiding the public to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a impeccable news source, her message rang true to many. It remains one of the outlets where one can locate grounded and largely reliable reporting – particularly during breaking news situations like the one developing in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable State During a Business Tug-of-War
However CNN, now middle-aged, finds itself in a precarious state as two giant media corporations battle over ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the fate of CNN has turned into a major game of business acquisition, instead of as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“Here is one more case of the profound systemic issues with origins in decades of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Pennsylvania University.
The debate about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a more important point.
“The narrative is crafted as a business story with key players as the main characters, but there is very little discussion of the common good,” Pickard said.
The Complicating Factor: The Former President
The CNN scenario is further muddied by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his chief “fake news” foe.
Remember the cries of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration's retaliatory revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership. Many see this as a desire for ownership that will shield him from criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he seems to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
Trump has reason to like that bidder more. For one thing, it is controlled by David Ellison, son of the ally of Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
The company, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the conservative Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.
A Possibility of Continued Uncertainty
Significantly, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a standalone company. That would be a relief to many at the network, but it’s far from a guarantee of stability. That structure could pave the way for CNN for yet another acquisition. 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 wrote recently that competition laws should prohibit both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be bad for the country, and both should be opposed by regulators,” Wu recently wrote.
The Core Problem and a Way Ahead
Regardless of the resolution with this particular battle, the bigger problem persists.
“What we have now is a very anti-democratic system, but we ought not succumb to learned helplessness,” Pickard noted. Government actions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can tackle it.
Is this likely in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Change is a distant prospect now, but that is not to say it will not happen in the future.
Measures that strengthen independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, subsidize public media, and prevent the concentration of media power in a handful of hands are not only possible – they are vital for a robust democracy.
Regarding media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations such as CNN must not be pieces in the latest corporate chess match.
