Late Thursday, amid swirling speculation concerning an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, noting the confusion and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.
Although CNN is certainly not a impeccable news source, her message resonated for a lot of people. It remains one of the outlets where one can locate fact-based and mostly reliable reporting – particularly during fast-moving events such as the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious State Amid a Business Battle
But CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a precarious state as two massive media conglomerates compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the future of CNN has become part of a high-risk game of business acquisition, instead of as a question of what benefits the information-seeking public.
“This represents another instance of the fundamental flaws with roots in many years of policy decisions,” noted Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Penn.
The speculation about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a broader point.
“The narrative is crafted as a business story with key players as the protagonists, but there is scant discussion of the public interest,” Pickard said.
The Complicating Layer: The Former President
The CNN scenario 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 administration’s punitive suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now says that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will insulate him from negative coverage and examination. That is part of why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
He has grounds to favor that company more. For one thing, it is run by David Ellison, son of the Trump-friendly Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
The company, owner of CBS News, also recently placed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that storied news network.
A Possibility of Continued Instability
It is important to note, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a separate entity. This might be a relief to many at the network, but it’s far from a safe harbor. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for another sale. It never ends.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is against the law, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance recently argued that competition laws should block both deals.
“Either merger would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by the government,” Wu recently wrote.
The Bigger Challenge and a Way Ahead
Whatever happens in this situation, the underlying crisis remains.
“Our current system is a very system hostile to democracy, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Government actions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this hyper-commercialized monster, and different policy decisions can fix it.
Will that happen in an era where the top communications regulator will not confirm that the agency is independent? Reform is a distant prospect now, but that is not to say it will not happen in the future.
Measures that support independent news organizations, aid local journalism, fund public media, and outlaw the concentration of media power in very few hands are not only possible – they are essential for a healthy democracy.
In the world of media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations including CNN shouldn’t be pawns in the most recent merger game.
