Late Thursday, as rumors swirled concerning the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, pointing out the conflicting information and pointing viewers to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While CNN is certainly not a flawless news source, her message rang true to many. It stands as one of the outlets where one can locate grounded and largely dependable reporting – particularly during crises like the one developing in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
An Uncertain Situation Amid a High-Stakes Battle
However CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a uncertain state as two huge media corporations vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the fate of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of business acquisition, not as a question of what helps the information-seeking public.
“Here is one more case of the profound systemic issues with origins in decades of governmental choices,” stated Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The conjecture about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a broader point.
“The narrative is crafted as a financial tale with powerful individuals as the main characters, but there is very little discussion of the public interest,” Pickard added.
The Additional Factor: Political Influence
The network's predicament is made more complex by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his primary “fake news” foe.
Think back to the cries of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now claims that CNN needs new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will protect him from journalistic oversight. That is one reason why he appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
He has grounds to prefer that bidder more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the ally of Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
The company, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the conservative Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that storied news network.
An Outcome of More Uncertainty
Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a standalone company. Such a move could be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a safe harbor. That arrangement could position CNN for yet another acquisition. There is no finish line.
According to Timothy Wu, much of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The influential voice 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 opposed by the government,” Wu argued.
The Bigger Challenge and a Potential Solution
Regardless of the resolution regarding CNN, the larger issue persists.
“The present media landscape is a very structure that undermines democracy, but we ought not succumb to learned helplessness,” Pickard said. Government actions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and different policy decisions can fix it.
Is this likely in an era where the head of the FCC refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Overhaul is very unlikely now, but that should not imply it will not happen in the future.
Measures that support independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, subsidize public media, and outlaw the accumulation of media power in too few hands are not only possible – they are essential for a robust democracy.
In the world of media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations such as CNN shouldn’t be pieces in the most recent acquisition battle.
