Late Thursday, while unconfirmed reports spread about a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, pointing out the conflicting information and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.
Although CNN is certainly not a perfect news source, her message rang true for a lot of people. It stands as one of the organizations where there exists grounded and mostly reliable reporting – notably during crises like the one taking place in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable Situation During a Corporate Struggle
However CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious position as two giant media conglomerates vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the destiny of CNN has become part of a high-risk game of mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with origins in many years of governmental choices,” said Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Pennsylvania University.
The debate about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a larger point.
“The narrative is crafted as a corporate drama with key players as the main characters, but there is scant discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard added.
The Complicating Element: The Former President
The network's predicament is complicated by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his chief “fake news” adversary.
Recall the cries of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration’s punitive 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 insulate him from journalistic oversight. That is one reason why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
He has grounds to like that bidder more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the pro-Trump 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 Future of Further Uncertainty
Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a standalone company. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a safe harbor. That setup could position CNN for yet another acquisition. The cycle continues.
According to Timothy Wu, much of this is against the law, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that anti-trust laws should prohibit both deals.
“Either merger would be bad for the country, and both should be challenged by anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.
The Bigger Problem and a Path Forward
Whatever happens in this situation, the larger issue remains.
“Our current system is a profoundly structure that undermines democracy, but we ought not succumb to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Regulatory choices – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can address it.
Can reform occur in an era where the top communications regulator won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Reform is very unlikely now, but that is not to say it will not happen in the future.
Initiatives that bolster independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, subsidize public media, and prohibit the consolidation of media power in very few hands are not only possible – they are vital for a healthy democracy.
Regarding media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations including CNN cannot be pieces in the most recent merger game.
