On Thursday evening, as rumors swirled regarding a shooting at Brown University, the network's Kaitlan Collins took to social media, noting the confusion and pointing viewers to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a impeccable news source, her words rang true for a lot of people. It remains one of the outlets where you can find grounded and mostly trustworthy reporting – especially during crises such as the one unfolding close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Position During a Business Struggle
Yet CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious state as two huge media corporations vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the destiny of CNN has been drawn into a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, rather than as a question of what serves the information-seeking public.
“This is yet another example of the fundamental flaws with roots in many years of governmental choices,” noted Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The speculation about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a more important point.
“It is often framed as a business story with influential figures as the main characters, but there is very little discussion of the common good,” Pickard added.
The Complicating Element: The Former President
The network's predicament is made more complex by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his main “fake news” antagonist.
Recall the chants of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his team's disciplinary revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now claims that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from criticism and scrutiny. That is a factor in why he appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
He has grounds to like that suitor 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 conservative Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.
A Future of Continued Turmoil
Significantly, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s hardly a safe harbor. That structure could position CNN for yet another acquisition. It never ends.
According to Timothy Wu, a lot of this is against the law, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should block both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be bad for the country, and both should be challenged by the government,” Wu stated.
The Core Issue and a Way Ahead
Regardless of the resolution regarding CNN, the bigger problem endures.
“What we have now is a highly anti-democratic system, but we shouldn’t give in to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard said. Regulatory choices – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can tackle it.
Can reform occur in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair will not confirm that the agency is independent? Reform is very unlikely now, but that should not imply it will never happen.
Policies that support independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, finance public media, and prohibit the accumulation of media power in very few hands are not only possible – they are vital for a functioning democracy.
Regarding media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations like CNN shouldn’t be pawns in the newest acquisition battle.
