Late Thursday, amid swirling speculation about an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, pointing out the conflicting information and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Even though the network is hardly a perfect news source, her statement seemed accurate for numerous observers. It stands as one of the outlets where one can locate grounded and mostly dependable reporting – notably during breaking news situations such as the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Situation Amid a Corporate Struggle
However CNN, now middle-aged, finds itself in a vulnerable situation as two huge media empires battle over ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“This is yet another example of the profound systemic issues with origins in decades of governmental choices,” stated Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Pennsylvania University.
The speculation about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a broader point.
“It gets presented as a financial tale with powerful individuals as the main characters, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard added.
The Additional Element: The Former President
This situation is made more complex by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his chief “fake news” adversary.
Recall the cries of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his team's disciplinary revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now says that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from journalistic oversight. That is a factor in why he appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
Trump has reason to favor that company more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the pro-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 top editor of that historic news network.
A Future of Further Instability
Significantly, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a safe harbor. That setup could pave the way for CNN for yet another acquisition. It never ends.
If you ask Timothy Wu, much of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should disallow both deals.
“Either merger would be bad for the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu stated.
The Fundamental Problem and a Way Ahead
Regardless of the resolution regarding CNN, the underlying crisis endures.
“Our current system is a profoundly anti-democratic system, but we must resist the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard noted. Regulatory choices – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can address it.
Can reform occur in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Overhaul is a distant prospect now, but that doesn’t mean it will never happen.
Measures that support independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, finance public media, and prevent the concentration of media power in very few hands are within reach – they are necessary for a functioning democracy.
In the world of media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations including CNN must not be pawns in the latest acquisition battle.
