This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation about the Brown University gunman, the network's Kaitlan Collins used social media, noting the confusion and pointing viewers to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While it is by no means a perfect news source, her message resonated to many. It is one of the outlets where there exists grounded and generally trustworthy reporting – particularly during crises like the one taking place close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Situation During a Corporate Struggle
Yet CNN, now middle-aged, finds itself in a uncertain situation as two massive media conglomerates battle over ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the future of CNN has been drawn into a high-risk game of mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the fundamental flaws with origins in decades of governmental choices,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The conjecture about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a larger point.
“It gets presented as a financial tale with key players as the central actors, but there is hardly any discussion of the public interest,” Pickard said.
The Complicating Layer: Donald Trump
This situation is complicated by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his chief “fake news” adversary.
Think back to the chants of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration’s punitive 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 protect him from criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he seems to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
Trump has reason to favor that suitor 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, owner of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that storied news network.
A Possibility of Continued Uncertainty
Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a separate entity. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a safe harbor. That structure could set up CNN for a future sale. There is no finish line.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a lot of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance recently argued that anti-trust laws should block both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be harmful to the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu stated.
The Fundamental Challenge and a Potential Solution
Whatever happens in this situation, the bigger problem endures.
“Our current system is a very anti-democratic system, but we ought not succumb to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard noted. Policy decisions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can fix it.
Will that happen in an era where the head of the FCC will not confirm that the agency is independent? Overhaul is highly improbable now, but that doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.
Measures that support independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, fund public media, and prohibit the consolidation of media power in too few hands are not only possible – they are necessary for a robust democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations like CNN cannot be tools in the latest corporate chess match.
