This past Thursday night, while unconfirmed reports spread about the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, noting the confusion and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While it is by no means a impeccable news source, her message rang true for a lot of people. It remains one of the organizations where you can find reality-based and mostly dependable reporting – notably during fast-moving events like the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.
An Uncertain Position Amid a Corporate Battle
However the news network, now middle-aged, finds itself in a precarious situation as two giant media conglomerates vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the destiny of CNN has turned into a major game of business acquisition, not as a question of what serves the information-seeking public.
“This is yet another example of the deep structural problems with origins in many years of regulatory actions,” noted Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The conjecture about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a larger point.
“It is often framed as a business story with powerful individuals as the central actors, but there is hardly any discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard explained.
The Complicating Layer: Political Influence
The network's predicament is made more complex by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his chief “fake news” foe.
Remember the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his team's disciplinary revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now says that the network requires new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will protect him from criticism and scrutiny. That is one reason why he seems to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
There is a basis to prefer that bidder 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.
Paramount, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that historic news network.
A Future of Further Instability
Notably, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a separate entity. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a safe harbor. That setup could set up CNN for yet another acquisition. There is no finish line.
If you ask Timothy Wu, much of this is illegal, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should disallow both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be bad for the country, and both should be opposed by anti-trust authorities,” Wu stated.
The Bigger Problem and a Way Ahead
Regardless of the resolution with this particular battle, the larger issue persists.
“The present media landscape is a highly anti-democratic system, but we ought not succumb to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Government actions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this hyper-commercialized monster, and revised policy decisions can fix it.
Can reform occur in an era where the head of the FCC will not confirm that the agency is independent? Reform is highly improbable now, but that should not imply it will not happen in the future.
Policies that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, finance public media, and prohibit the consolidation of media power in a handful of hands are not only possible – they are essential for a robust democracy.
In the world of media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations including CNN cannot be pawns in the most recent corporate chess match.
