This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation regarding an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, noting the confusion and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a impeccable news source, her message rang true for numerous observers. It remains one of the outlets where you can find fact-based and mostly reliable reporting – notably during breaking news situations like the one taking place in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable Position Amid a High-Stakes Tug-of-War
But 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.
No matter the result, the future of CNN has turned into a high-risk game of business acquisition, instead of as a question of what helps the news-consuming public.
“This is yet another example of the fundamental flaws with origins in many years of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a academic specializing in media policy at the Penn.
The speculation about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a more important point.
“It is often framed as a corporate drama with key players as the main characters, but there is scant discussion of the public interest,” Pickard said.
The Complicating Layer: 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” foe.
Think back to the chants of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his team's disciplinary withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from criticism and scrutiny. That is a factor in why he seems to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
Trump has reason to like that company more. For one thing, it is run by David Ellison, son of the pro-Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
Paramount, parent of CBS News, also recently appointed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.
A Possibility of Continued Turmoil
Notably, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a secure position. That structure could set up CNN for yet another acquisition. The cycle continues.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a lot of this is against the law, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance recently argued that competition laws should block both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be detrimental to the country, and both should be challenged by regulators,” Wu recently wrote.
The Core Challenge and a Potential Solution
No matter the outcome regarding CNN, the bigger problem remains.
“Our current system is a highly structure that undermines democracy, but we ought not succumb to learned helplessness,” Pickard emphasized. Government actions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this hyper-commercialized monster, and different policy decisions can fix it.
Can reform occur in an era where the top communications regulator won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Change is highly improbable now, but that is not to say it will be impossible forever.
Measures that support independent news organizations, aid local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the consolidation of media power in a handful of hands are achievable – they are essential for a healthy democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations like CNN cannot be tools in the newest acquisition battle.
