Late Thursday, while unconfirmed reports spread about an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, noting the confusion and pointing viewers to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Even though it is by no means a perfect news source, her words resonated to many. It stands as one of the broadcasters where there exists fact-based and generally trustworthy reporting – especially during fast-moving events such as the one taking place near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious State During a Corporate Tug-of-War
Yet CNN, now middle-aged, finds itself in a precarious situation as two huge media empires compete for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the future of CNN has become part of a major game of mergers and acquisitions, rather than as a question of what helps the news-consuming public.
“This is yet another example of the deep structural problems with origins in many years of regulatory actions,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The debate about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a larger point.
“It gets presented as a business story with powerful individuals as the central actors, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard added.
A Further Factor: Donald Trump
The CNN scenario is further muddied by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his primary “fake news” antagonist.
Remember the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now claims that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect 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 like that company more. For one thing, it is controlled by David Ellison, son of the ally of Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
Paramount, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that historic news network.
A Future of Further Uncertainty
Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. That would be a relief to many at the network, but it’s hardly a secure position. That setup could position CNN for a future sale. It never ends.
If you ask Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should prohibit both deals.
“Either merger would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.
The Fundamental Challenge and a Potential Solution
Whatever happens in this situation, the underlying crisis persists.
“Our current system is a very structure that undermines democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to learned helplessness,” Pickard noted. Policy decisions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this profit-obsessed monster, and different policy decisions can address it.
Will that happen in an era where the top communications regulator will not confirm that the agency is independent? Overhaul is a distant prospect now, but that doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.
Measures that support independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the concentration of media power in very few hands are not only possible – they are vital for a robust democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations such as CNN shouldn’t be pieces in the newest corporate chess match.
