Late Thursday, as rumors swirled about a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, pointing out the conflicting information and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a perfect news source, her message resonated for a lot of people. It stands as one of the outlets where you can find grounded and largely trustworthy reporting – notably during fast-moving events like the one taking place in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Situation Amid a Corporate Struggle
However the news network, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a uncertain state as two massive media corporations compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the destiny of CNN has become part of a major game of business acquisition, not as a question of what helps the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with origins in decades of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The speculation about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a broader point.
“It is often framed as a business story with key players as the protagonists, but there is hardly any discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard added.
The Additional Layer: Donald Trump
The network's predicament is complicated by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his primary “fake news” foe.
Recall the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his team's disciplinary revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from criticism and scrutiny. That is one reason why he seems to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
Trump has reason to favor that suitor more. For one thing, it is run 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 placed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that historic news network.
An Outcome of More Instability
It is important to note, 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 not exactly a guarantee of stability. That structure could position CNN for another sale. There is no finish line.
According to Timothy Wu, a lot of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, 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 the government,” Wu recently wrote.
The Bigger Problem and a Path Forward
Regardless of the resolution regarding CNN, the bigger problem endures.
“What we have now is a very anti-democratic system, but we shouldn’t give in to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard emphasized. Government actions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this hyper-commercialized monster, and new policy decisions can fix it.
Will that happen in an era where the top communications regulator will not confirm that the agency is independent? Reform is highly improbable now, but that is not to say it will be impossible forever.
Policies that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, subsidize public media, and prohibit the concentration of media power in very few hands are not only possible – they are necessary for a healthy democracy.
In the world of media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations like CNN shouldn’t be tools in the latest merger game.
