This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation regarding a shooting at Brown University, the network's Kaitlan Collins used social media, noting the confusion and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.
Although CNN is certainly not a perfect news source, her words resonated for a lot of people. It remains one of the broadcasters where one can locate fact-based and largely dependable reporting – notably during crises like the one unfolding in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Situation During a Corporate Struggle
But CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious situation as two massive media conglomerates compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a major game of business acquisition, rather than as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“This is yet another example of the deep structural problems with roots in decades of governmental choices,” noted Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The speculation about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a more important point.
“It gets presented as a business story with influential figures as the protagonists, but there is very little discussion of the public interest,” Pickard said.
The Additional Layer: The Former President
The network's predicament is made more complex by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his primary “fake news” foe.
Remember the cries of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration's retaliatory revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now claims that CNN needs new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will protect him from journalistic oversight. That is part of why he seems to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
There is a basis to prefer that bidder more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the pro-Trump 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 lead editor of that venerable news network.
A Possibility of Further Instability
It is important to note, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a separate entity. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a guarantee of stability. That structure 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 influential voice of big tech’s dominance recently argued that competition laws should disallow both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be bad for the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu argued.
The Bigger Challenge and a Potential Solution
No matter the outcome regarding CNN, the underlying crisis remains.
“The present media landscape is a very system hostile to democracy, but we ought not succumb to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard emphasized. Policy decisions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can fix it.
Is this likely in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Change is highly improbable now, but that doesn’t mean it will be impossible forever.
Initiatives that support independent news organizations, aid local journalism, subsidize public media, and outlaw the accumulation of media power in too few hands are within reach – they are vital for a functioning democracy.
In the world of media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations such as CNN must not be pawns in the newest merger game.
