This past Thursday night, as rumors swirled about the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on 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 statement seemed accurate for numerous observers. It is one of the organizations where you can find grounded and mostly reliable reporting – notably during crises like the one unfolding in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Situation Amid a High-Stakes Battle
Yet CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a uncertain state as two huge media conglomerates compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the future of CNN has been drawn into a high-stakes game of corporate ownership, not as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“Here is one more case of the deep structural problems with roots in decades of policy decisions,” noted Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The conjecture about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a broader point.
“It gets presented as a financial tale with key players as the central actors, but there is very little discussion of the common good,” Pickard added.
The Additional Element: Donald Trump
This situation is made more complex by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his main “fake news” adversary.
Think back to the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration’s punitive withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now claims that CNN needs new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will protect him from negative coverage and examination. That is one reason why he seems to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
He has grounds to prefer 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 placed the conservative Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that historic news network.
An Outcome of More Instability
Notably, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. Such a move could be a relief to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a safe harbor. That setup could pave the way for CNN for another sale. The cycle continues.
According to Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is illegal, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should disallow both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by regulators,” Wu argued.
The Core Problem and a Potential Solution
Whatever happens regarding CNN, the bigger problem endures.
“What we have now is a very structure that undermines democracy, but we ought not succumb to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard said. Policy decisions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can tackle it.
Will that happen in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair will not confirm that the agency is independent? Overhaul is a distant prospect now, but that doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.
Measures that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, fund public media, and prohibit the consolidation of media power in a handful of hands are not only possible – they are necessary for a healthy democracy.
Regarding media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations such as CNN cannot be pieces in the most recent corporate chess match.
