This past Thursday night, while unconfirmed reports spread concerning an incident at Brown University, the network's Kaitlan Collins used social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While it is by no means a flawless news source, her words resonated for a lot of people. It remains one of the outlets where there exists grounded and mostly trustworthy reporting – especially during breaking news situations such as the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable State During a Corporate Battle
Yet CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious state as two giant media empires vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the destiny of CNN has been drawn into a major game of mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what benefits the information-seeking public.
“Here is one more case of the fundamental flaws with roots in decades of governmental choices,” noted Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Penn.
The conjecture about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a broader point.
“It gets presented as a financial tale with powerful individuals as the protagonists, but there is very little discussion of the common good,” Pickard explained.
The Complicating Element: Donald Trump
This situation is made more complex by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his chief “fake news” adversary.
Think back to the chants of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his team's disciplinary revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from negative coverage and examination. That is part of why he appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
There is a basis to like 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, parent of CBS News, also recently appointed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.
A Future of More Instability
Notably, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a standalone company. That would be a relief to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a guarantee of stability. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for yet another acquisition. The cycle continues.
If you ask Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is illegal, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that anti-trust laws should block both deals.
“Either merger would be detrimental to the country, and both should be challenged by the government,” Wu recently wrote.
The Core Challenge and a Path Forward
Regardless of the resolution in this situation, the larger issue persists.
“What we have now is a highly anti-democratic system, but we must resist learned helplessness,” Pickard emphasized. Policy decisions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and different policy decisions can fix it.
Is this likely in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Change is a distant prospect now, but that is not to say it will never happen.
Policies that support independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, finance public media, and outlaw the concentration of media power in very few hands are within reach – they are essential for a healthy democracy.
In the world of media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations like CNN shouldn’t be tools in the most recent merger game.
