This past Thursday night, while unconfirmed reports spread concerning a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, pointing out the conflicting information and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.
Although the network is hardly a impeccable news source, her statement seemed accurate for a lot of people. It is one of the organizations where one can locate fact-based and mostly dependable reporting – particularly during fast-moving events like the one unfolding close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Situation During a High-Stakes Battle
But CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a uncertain position as two massive media corporations compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the future of CNN has been drawn into a major game of corporate ownership, not as a question of what serves the information-seeking public.
“Here is one more case of the profound systemic issues with origins in many years of regulatory actions,” noted Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The debate about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a more important point.
“It is often framed as a financial tale with key players as the protagonists, but there is hardly any discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard explained.
The Additional Layer: 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” antagonist.
Recall the cries of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration’s punitive revocation 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. You can read that as ownership that will insulate him from negative coverage and examination. That is part of why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
There is a basis to favor that suitor more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the ally of Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
The company, owner of CBS News, also recently placed the conservative Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that venerable news network.
An Outcome of More Uncertainty
Significantly, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. Such a move could be a relief to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a safe harbor. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for yet another acquisition. The cycle continues.
According to Timothy Wu, much of this is illegal, 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 challenged by the government,” Wu argued.
The Core Challenge and a Way Ahead
Whatever happens regarding CNN, the bigger problem persists.
“The present media landscape is a very anti-democratic system, but we must resist learned helplessness,” Pickard noted. Regulatory choices – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can tackle it.
Will that happen in an era where the top communications regulator refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Reform is a distant prospect now, but that should not imply it will never happen.
Measures that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, subsidize public media, and outlaw the concentration of media power in very few hands are achievable – they are vital for a robust democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations including CNN shouldn’t be pieces in the latest merger game.
