Late Thursday, as rumors swirled about the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, noting the confusion and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Even though the network is hardly a impeccable news source, her words seemed accurate to many. It stands as one of the outlets where you can find grounded and largely trustworthy reporting – particularly during breaking news situations like the one developing in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable Position Amid a Business Struggle
Yet the news network, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious state as two giant media conglomerates vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the future of CNN has been drawn into a major game of mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“Here is one more case of the fundamental flaws 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 who will own Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a larger point.
“It gets presented as a corporate drama with influential figures as the protagonists, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard added.
A Further Element: The Former President
This situation is complicated by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his main “fake news” adversary.
Think back to the chants of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his team's disciplinary withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will insulate him from journalistic oversight. That is part of why he seems to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
Trump has reason to favor that company more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the pro-Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
The company, owner of CBS News, also recently appointed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that historic news network.
A Future of Continued Instability
It is important to note, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a standalone company. Such a move could be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a guarantee of stability. That structure could position CNN for yet another acquisition. The cycle continues.
According to Timothy Wu, a lot of this is against the law, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that anti-trust laws should block both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be bad for the country, and both should be contested by regulators,” Wu recently wrote.
The Fundamental Issue and a Way Ahead
Whatever happens with this particular battle, the larger issue persists.
“The present media landscape is a profoundly anti-democratic system, but we must resist the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard said. Government actions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this overly commercial monster, and new policy decisions can tackle it.
Is this likely 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 not happen in the future.
Measures that bolster independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, subsidize public media, and prohibit the concentration of media power in too few hands are achievable – they are vital for a healthy democracy.
In the world of media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations including CNN must not be pawns in the newest corporate chess match.
