On Thursday evening, amid swirling speculation about the Brown University gunman, the network's Kaitlan Collins took to social media, noting the confusion and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.
Although it is by no means a flawless news source, her message resonated to many. It remains one of the broadcasters where one can locate grounded and largely trustworthy reporting – particularly during fast-moving events like the one developing in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable State During a High-Stakes Battle
Yet CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a vulnerable state as two huge media empires vie for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the future of CNN has been drawn into a high-risk game of corporate ownership, rather than as a question of what helps the information-seeking public.
“Here is one more case of the fundamental flaws with roots in decades of policy decisions,” noted Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Penn.
The conjecture about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a larger point.
“The narrative is crafted as a business story with influential figures as the protagonists, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard explained.
The Complicating Layer: Donald Trump
The network's predicament is further muddied by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his primary “fake news” adversary.
Think back to the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his team's disciplinary withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges 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 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.
He has grounds to favor that suitor more. For one thing, it is controlled by David Ellison, son of the Trump-friendly Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
Paramount, parent of CBS News, also recently appointed the conservative Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that historic news network.
An Outcome of Further Instability
Notably, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a standalone company. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a safe harbor. That structure could position CNN for a future sale. The cycle continues.
In the view of 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 prohibit both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be harmful to the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu stated.
The Bigger Challenge and a Path Forward
No matter the outcome with this particular battle, the bigger problem endures.
“What we have now is a very system hostile to democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard said. Policy decisions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can address it.
Is this likely in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Change is highly improbable now, but that should not imply it will not happen in the future.
Measures that support independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, finance public media, and prevent the concentration of media power in too few hands are not only possible – they are vital for a functioning democracy.
Regarding media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations such as CNN cannot be tools in the most recent merger game.
