Late Thursday, amid swirling speculation regarding the Brown University gunman, the network's Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While CNN is certainly not a flawless news source, her words rang true to many. It is one of the outlets where one can locate grounded and mostly trustworthy reporting – particularly during crises like the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Situation During a High-Stakes Tug-of-War
Yet the news network, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a uncertain state as two giant media corporations battle over ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the future of CNN has become part of a high-risk game of business acquisition, rather than as a question of what helps the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the profound systemic issues with origins in decades of regulatory actions,” noted Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Pennsylvania University.
The conjecture about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a more important point.
“It gets presented as a business story with powerful individuals as the central actors, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard added.
A Further Factor: The Former President
This situation is made more complex by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his primary “fake news” antagonist.
Remember the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his team's disciplinary revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now asserts that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
There is a basis to prefer that bidder 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.
The company, parent of CBS News, also recently appointed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that historic news network.
A Possibility of Further Turmoil
It is important to note, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a separate entity. Such a move could be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a guarantee of stability. That setup could pave the way for CNN for another sale. It never ends.
According to Timothy Wu, a lot of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance recently argued that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be bad for the country, and both should be challenged by regulators,” Wu argued.
The Fundamental Challenge and a Path Forward
Whatever happens regarding CNN, the larger issue persists.
“Our current system is a profoundly anti-democratic system, but we shouldn’t give in to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Policy decisions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this hyper-commercialized monster, and revised policy decisions can fix it.
Can reform occur in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Overhaul is a distant prospect now, but that doesn’t mean it will be impossible forever.
Policies that support independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, subsidize public media, and prohibit the consolidation of media power in very few hands are within reach – they are vital for a healthy democracy.
In the world of media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations including CNN must not be pieces in the latest acquisition battle.
