Late Thursday, amid swirling speculation about an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, pointing out the conflicting information and pointing viewers to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Although the network is hardly a perfect news source, her message rang true for a lot of people. It remains one of the organizations where you can find reality-based and generally reliable reporting – notably during breaking news situations such as the one taking place near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Situation During a Business Tug-of-War
However CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a precarious state as two giant media empires battle over ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the destiny of CNN has been drawn into a major game of corporate ownership, instead of as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with origins in decades of policy decisions,” noted Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a academic specializing in media policy at the Pennsylvania University.
The conjecture about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a larger point.
“It is often framed as a corporate drama with key players 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 long portrayed as perhaps his main “fake news” antagonist.
Think back to the chants of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration's retaliatory suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
There is a basis to favor that company 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, owner of CBS News, also recently placed the conservative Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that historic news network.
A Possibility of More Instability
Significantly, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a standalone company. Such a move could be a relief to many at the network, but it’s hardly a safe harbor. That setup could set up CNN for yet another acquisition. There is no finish line.
According to Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is against the law, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance stated that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.
The Bigger Problem and a Potential Solution
Regardless of the resolution with this particular battle, the underlying crisis endures.
“What we have now is a highly system hostile to democracy, but we ought not succumb to learned helplessness,” Pickard emphasized. Policy decisions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this hyper-commercialized monster, and revised policy decisions can address it.
Can reform occur in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Change is highly improbable now, but that doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.
Policies that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the concentration of media power in a handful of hands are not only possible – they are essential for a healthy democracy.
In the world of media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations like CNN must not be pawns in the most recent acquisition battle.
