This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation about an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, highlighting the uncertainty and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a perfect news source, her words seemed accurate for a lot of people. It remains one of the organizations where one can locate reality-based and mostly trustworthy reporting – especially during breaking news situations such as the one developing in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
An Uncertain Situation Amid a Corporate Battle
However CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious state as two giant media corporations vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the future of CNN has been drawn into a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, instead of as a question of what benefits the information-seeking public.
“This is yet another example of the fundamental flaws with origins in many years of regulatory actions,” stated Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a academic specializing in media policy at the Pennsylvania University.
The conjecture about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a more important point.
“The narrative is crafted as a corporate drama with powerful individuals as the central actors, but there is scant discussion of the public interest,” Pickard said.
The Complicating Element: Donald Trump
This situation is further muddied by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his primary “fake news” antagonist.
Think back to the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his administration’s punitive withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now claims that CNN needs new ownership. Many see this as a desire for ownership that will insulate him from negative coverage and examination. That is one reason why he seems to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
There is a basis to prefer that bidder 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 placed the conservative Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that storied news network.
An Outcome of More Instability
Notably, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. That would be a relief to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a safe harbor. That setup could position CNN for a future sale. There is no finish line.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a lot of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by regulators,” Wu stated.
The Fundamental Challenge and a Potential Solution
No matter the outcome in this situation, the larger issue persists.
“Our current system is a very structure that undermines democracy, but we must resist the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard noted. Regulatory choices – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can tackle it.
Is this likely in an era where the top communications regulator will not confirm that the agency is independent? Reform is a distant prospect now, but that doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.
Measures that bolster independent news organizations, aid local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the concentration of media power in too few hands are not only possible – they are vital for a functioning democracy.
In the world of media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations such as CNN must not be tools in the most recent corporate chess match.
