This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation about a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, noting the confusion and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a flawless news source, her words resonated for a lot of people. It remains one of the outlets where you can find reality-based and largely trustworthy reporting – particularly during crises such as the one developing close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Situation During a Business Battle
However CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a vulnerable position as two huge media corporations compete for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the future of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of business acquisition, not as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with roots in decades of governmental choices,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Penn.
The debate about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a larger point.
“The narrative is crafted as a business story with key players as the protagonists, but there is very little discussion of the public interest,” Pickard said.
A Further Element: The Former President
The CNN scenario is made more complex by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his primary “fake news” foe.
Remember the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration’s punitive withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now says that the network requires new ownership. Many see this as a desire for ownership that will protect him from journalistic oversight. That is part of why he appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
There is a basis to like 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 appointed the conservative Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that venerable news network.
A Possibility of Further Turmoil
Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. Such a move could be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s hardly a secure position. That structure could position CNN for yet another acquisition. The cycle continues.
According to Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is illegal, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by the government,” Wu recently wrote.
The Bigger Issue and a Path Forward
Regardless of the resolution in this situation, the underlying crisis persists.
“What we have now is a very anti-democratic system, but we ought not succumb to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard said. Policy decisions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this hyper-commercialized monster, and new policy decisions can address it.
Is this likely in an era where the top communications regulator refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Change is a distant prospect now, but that is not to say it will be impossible forever.
Policies that strengthen independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, finance public media, and prevent the accumulation of media power in a handful of hands are within reach – they are essential for a robust democracy.
Regarding media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations such as CNN shouldn’t be pawns in the newest corporate chess match.
