This past Thursday night, as rumors swirled regarding an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a impeccable news source, her statement seemed accurate for a lot of people. It stands as one of the organizations where you can find fact-based and largely reliable reporting – especially during breaking news situations like the one unfolding in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Position During a Business Tug-of-War
However CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a vulnerable situation as two giant media empires battle over ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the future of CNN has turned into a major game of corporate ownership, instead of as a question of what serves the information-seeking public.
“This is yet another example of the fundamental flaws with roots in decades of policy decisions,” stated Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The speculation about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a larger point.
“It gets presented as a financial tale with powerful individuals as the central actors, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard added.
The Additional Layer: Political Influence
The network's predicament is further muddied by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his primary “fake news” foe.
Think back to the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration's retaliatory withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now claims that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from negative coverage and examination. That is part of why he seems to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
There is a basis to like that company more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the Trump-friendly Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
The company, parent of CBS News, also recently appointed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top 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 standalone company. This might be a relief to many at the network, but it’s hardly a secure position. That structure could pave the way for CNN for another sale. The cycle continues.
If you ask Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is illegal, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance stated that competition laws should disallow both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be harmful to the country, and both should be opposed by regulators,” Wu recently wrote.
The Fundamental Issue and a Potential Solution
No matter the outcome in this situation, the larger issue remains.
“What we have now is a profoundly anti-democratic system, but we shouldn’t give in to learned helplessness,” Pickard noted. Government actions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this hyper-commercialized monster, and different policy decisions can tackle it.
Will that happen in an era where the head of the FCC will not confirm that the agency is independent? Reform is very unlikely now, but that doesn’t mean it will be impossible forever.
Measures that strengthen independent news organizations, aid local journalism, subsidize public media, and outlaw the concentration of media power in a handful of hands are not only possible – they are necessary for a functioning democracy.
In the world of media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations like CNN cannot be pawns in the latest corporate chess match.
