This past Thursday night, as rumors swirled concerning the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, pointing out the conflicting information and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.
Even though CNN is certainly not a impeccable news source, her statement resonated to many. It stands as one of the outlets where one can locate fact-based and largely dependable reporting – especially during breaking news situations like the one taking place close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable Situation During a Corporate Tug-of-War
But CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a vulnerable position as two massive media corporations battle over ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the destiny of CNN has turned into a high-stakes game of corporate ownership, instead of as a question of what serves the information-seeking public.
“Here is one more case of the deep structural problems with roots in many years of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Pennsylvania University.
The speculation about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a more important point.
“It gets presented as a business story with key players as the central actors, but there is very little discussion of the public interest,” Pickard added.
A Further Layer: Political Influence
This situation is complicated by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his primary “fake news” foe.
Remember the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his administration’s punitive withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from journalistic oversight. That is part of why he appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
There is a basis to favor that bidder 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, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the conservative Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that historic news network.
A Future of Continued Instability
Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a independent unit. This might be a relief to many at the network, but it’s far from a safe harbor. That arrangement could set up CNN for yet another acquisition. It never ends.
According to Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is against the law, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance recently argued that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.
“Either merger would be bad for the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu argued.
The Core Challenge and a Path Forward
Regardless of the resolution with this particular battle, the underlying crisis remains.
“The present media landscape is a profoundly anti-democratic system, but we ought not succumb to learned helplessness,” Pickard said. Government actions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can fix it.
Can reform occur in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Change is very unlikely now, but that is not to say it will not happen in the future.
Measures that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, fund public media, and outlaw the accumulation of media power in a handful of hands are within reach – they are necessary for a functioning democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations such as CNN shouldn’t be pawns in the most recent corporate chess match.
