On Thursday evening, while unconfirmed reports spread concerning an incident at Brown University, the network's Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and pointing viewers to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Even though CNN is certainly not a perfect news source, her words seemed accurate to many. It remains one of the organizations where you can find grounded and mostly trustworthy reporting – especially during crises such as the one unfolding in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable Situation Amid a Corporate Tug-of-War
But CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a vulnerable position as two huge media conglomerates compete for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the fate of CNN has turned into a high-risk game of mergers and acquisitions, instead of as a question of what helps the information-seeking public.
“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with roots in decades of governmental choices,” stated Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Penn.
The debate about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a larger point.
“It gets presented as a business story with key players as the central actors, but there is scant discussion of the public interest,” Pickard added.
The Additional Element: Political Influence
This situation is complicated by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his primary “fake news” adversary.
Recall 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 White House briefings.
Trump now says that the network requires new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will insulate him from journalistic oversight. That is a factor in why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
There is a basis to favor that suitor 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 installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.
A Future of Further Instability
Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out 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 set up CNN for another sale. The cycle continues.
According to Timothy Wu, a lot of this is illegal, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance stated that anti-trust laws should block both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.
The Core Issue and a Way Ahead
No matter the outcome regarding CNN, the larger issue persists.
“The present media landscape is a very structure that undermines democracy, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Policy decisions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this hyper-commercialized monster, and revised policy decisions can tackle it.
Can reform occur in an era where the top communications regulator won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Change is highly improbable now, but that should not imply it will not happen in the future.
Initiatives that strengthen independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, subsidize public media, and prevent the concentration of media power in very few hands are not only possible – they are vital for a robust democracy.
Regarding media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations like CNN cannot be tools in the most recent acquisition battle.
