Late Thursday, while unconfirmed reports spread about the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, pointing out the conflicting information and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While CNN is certainly not a flawless news source, her statement rang true for numerous observers. It stands as one of the organizations where one can locate grounded and generally trustworthy reporting – especially during fast-moving events like the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Position Amid a Corporate Tug-of-War
But the news network, now 45 years old, finds itself in a uncertain position as two massive media corporations battle over ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the destiny of CNN has been drawn into a major game of mergers and acquisitions, rather than as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the fundamental flaws with roots in many years of policy decisions,” stated Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The speculation about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a larger point.
“It gets presented as a corporate drama with key players as the protagonists, but there is scant discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard added.
The Complicating Layer: Political Influence
The CNN scenario is made more complex by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his primary “fake news” antagonist.
Remember the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from negative coverage and examination. That is a factor in why he appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
He has grounds to favor that bidder more. For one thing, it is controlled 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 conservative Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that venerable news network.
A Future of Continued Instability
Notably, if Netflix is successful, 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 set up CNN for yet another acquisition. It never ends.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should disallow both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be bad for the country, and both should be contested by regulators,” Wu stated.
The Fundamental Challenge and a Way Ahead
Regardless of the resolution regarding CNN, the underlying crisis remains.
“What we have now is a highly structure that undermines democracy, but we ought not succumb to learned helplessness,” Pickard emphasized. Government actions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed 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? Overhaul is a distant prospect now, but that is not to say it will never happen.
Initiatives that support independent news organizations, aid local journalism, finance public media, and prevent the accumulation of media power in very few hands are achievable – they are essential for a robust democracy.
Regarding media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations including CNN must not be pieces in the newest corporate chess match.
