On Thursday evening, amid swirling speculation about the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, highlighting the uncertainty and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Although CNN is certainly not a impeccable news source, her message rang true for numerous observers. It stands as one of the organizations where you can find grounded and largely reliable reporting – notably during fast-moving events like the one unfolding in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Situation Amid a Corporate Tug-of-War
Yet the news network, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious situation as two huge media empires vie for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the fate of CNN has turned into a high-risk game of mergers and acquisitions, instead of as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“Here is one more case of the fundamental flaws with roots in many years of policy decisions,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The conjecture about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a broader point.
“It is often framed as a corporate drama with influential figures as the protagonists, but there is scant discussion of the public interest,” Pickard explained.
The Additional Element: The Former President
This situation is complicated by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his chief “fake news” foe.
Remember the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his team's disciplinary suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
He has grounds to prefer that bidder more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the ally of Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
Paramount, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that storied news network.
A Future of More Turmoil
Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a independent unit. That would be a relief to many at the network, but it’s hardly a secure position. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for a future sale. It never ends.
According to Timothy Wu, a lot of this is against the law, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance recently argued that competition laws should block both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be bad for the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu argued.
The Core Problem and a Potential Solution
Whatever happens regarding CNN, the bigger problem persists.
“What we have now is a highly structure that undermines democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard emphasized. Regulatory choices – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this profit-obsessed monster, and different policy decisions can fix it.
Will that happen in an era where the head of the FCC refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Change is very unlikely now, but that is not to say it will never happen.
Policies that strengthen independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the accumulation of media power in very few hands are achievable – they are necessary for a functioning democracy.
Regarding media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations such as CNN must not be pawns in the newest corporate chess match.
