Late Thursday, amid swirling speculation concerning an incident at Brown University, the network's Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.
Even though the network is hardly a perfect news source, her words resonated for a lot of people. It stands as one of the organizations where there exists reality-based and mostly trustworthy reporting – particularly during crises like the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Position Amid a Corporate Tug-of-War
However CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a uncertain situation as two giant media corporations compete for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has turned into a high-risk game of corporate ownership, not as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“This is yet another example of the profound systemic issues with roots in decades of regulatory actions,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Pennsylvania University.
The conjecture about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a broader point.
“It gets presented as a financial tale with influential figures as the central actors, but there is scant discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard explained.
The Additional Factor: Political Influence
The CNN scenario is complicated by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his primary “fake news” foe.
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 clashes with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now says that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will insulate him from criticism and scrutiny. That is a factor in why he seems to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
There is a basis to prefer that company more. For one thing, it is controlled by David Ellison, son of the ally of Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
Paramount, owner of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that storied news network.
A Possibility of Further Turmoil
Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a separate entity. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a secure position. That setup could set up CNN for yet another acquisition. It never ends.
According to Timothy Wu, much of this is illegal, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance stated that competition laws should prohibit both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by the government,” Wu recently wrote.
The Fundamental Issue and a Way Ahead
Regardless of the resolution in this situation, the bigger problem endures.
“Our current system is a profoundly system hostile to democracy, but we ought not succumb to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Regulatory choices – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this overly commercial monster, and different 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? Overhaul is very unlikely now, but that should not imply it will not happen in the future.
Policies that support independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the accumulation of media power in too few hands are achievable – they are essential for a healthy democracy.
In the world of media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations including CNN cannot be pawns in the latest merger game.
