This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation concerning an incident at Brown University, the network's Kaitlan Collins took to social media, pointing out the conflicting information and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Even though it is by no means a perfect news source, her words resonated for a lot of people. It is one of the outlets where one can locate grounded and mostly dependable reporting – notably during crises such as the one developing close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Situation During a Corporate Struggle
However the news network, now middle-aged, finds itself in a uncertain situation as two huge media empires compete for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the destiny of CNN has been drawn into a high-risk game of business acquisition, instead of as a question of what helps the information-seeking public.
“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with roots in many years of regulatory actions,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a academic specializing in media policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The speculation about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a broader point.
“It is often framed as a business story with key players as the main characters, but there is scant discussion of the common good,” Pickard explained.
The Additional Layer: Political Influence
The network's predicament is made more complex by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his main “fake news” adversary.
Think back to the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his team's disciplinary withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now asserts that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from negative coverage and examination. That is part of why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
There is a basis to prefer that bidder more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the ally of Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
The company, parent of CBS News, also recently placed the conservative Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that storied news network.
A Possibility of Further Instability
Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a standalone company. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s hardly a guarantee of stability. That setup could pave the way for CNN for yet another acquisition. It never ends.
According to Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance stated that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be harmful to the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu stated.
The Bigger Challenge and a Potential Solution
Whatever happens with this particular battle, the underlying crisis endures.
“What we have now is a profoundly anti-democratic system, but we ought not succumb to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Policy decisions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this hyper-commercialized monster, and different policy decisions can address it.
Will that happen 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 is not to say it will be impossible forever.
Policies that bolster independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, finance public media, and outlaw the consolidation of media power in too few hands are not only possible – they are vital for a functioning democracy.
Regarding media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations including CNN cannot be tools in the most recent acquisition battle.
