This past Thursday night, while unconfirmed reports spread about a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, pointing out the conflicting information and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a impeccable news source, her words resonated for numerous observers. It is one of the outlets where one can locate fact-based and largely trustworthy reporting – notably during fast-moving events such as the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.
An Uncertain Position Amid a High-Stakes Battle
Yet the news network, now 45 years old, finds itself in a vulnerable situation as two massive media corporations vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the future of CNN has been drawn into a major game of mergers and acquisitions, instead of as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“This is yet another example of the deep structural problems with roots in decades of regulatory actions,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The debate about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a more important point.
“It is often framed as a business story with influential figures as the protagonists, but there is very little discussion of the common good,” Pickard said.
The Additional Factor: The Former President
This situation is complicated by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his main “fake news” antagonist.
Recall the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration's retaliatory 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. This can be interpreted as ownership that will shield him from journalistic oversight. That is a factor in why he appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
Trump has reason to prefer that company more. For one thing, it is controlled 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 appointed the conservative Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that storied news network.
An Outcome of Further Instability
Significantly, 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 far from a guarantee of stability. That setup could pave the way for CNN for yet another acquisition. There is no finish line.
According to Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that anti-trust laws should prohibit both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be harmful to the country, and both should be challenged by regulators,” Wu recently wrote.
The Bigger Problem and a Way Ahead
Whatever happens with this particular battle, the bigger problem remains.
“What we have now is a profoundly structure that undermines democracy, but we ought not succumb to learned helplessness,” Pickard noted. Government actions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this hyper-commercialized monster, and different policy decisions can tackle it.
Will that happen in an era where the top communications regulator won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Reform is highly improbable now, but that should not imply it will not happen in the future.
Policies that bolster independent news organizations, aid local journalism, finance public media, and prohibit the accumulation of media power in a handful of hands are achievable – they are essential for a functioning democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations such as CNN cannot be pieces in the most recent acquisition battle.
