On Thursday evening, as rumors swirled concerning a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, pointing out the conflicting information and guiding the public to her network’s 9pm newscast.
Although it is by no means a flawless news source, her message rang true for a lot of people. It stands as one of the outlets where you can find fact-based and generally trustworthy reporting – notably during fast-moving events like the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious State Amid a Corporate Tug-of-War
But CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a precarious situation as two huge media corporations vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the destiny of CNN has turned into a high-stakes game of business acquisition, rather than as a question of what benefits the information-seeking public.
“Here is one more case of the profound systemic issues with origins in many years of policy decisions,” noted Victor Pickard, writer 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 – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp 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 public interest,” Pickard said.
The Complicating Layer: Donald Trump
The network's predicament is complicated by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his chief “fake news” adversary.
Remember the cries of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now claims that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will insulate him from negative coverage and examination. That is one reason why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
Trump has reason to favor that bidder more. For one thing, it is controlled by David Ellison, son of the pro-Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
The company, owner of CBS News, also recently appointed the conservative Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.
An Outcome of Further Uncertainty
Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a independent unit. This might be a relief to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a guarantee of stability. That arrangement could set up CNN for yet another acquisition. There is no finish line.
If you ask Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is illegal, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance stated that competition laws should block both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu argued.
The Bigger Issue and a Path Forward
No matter the outcome in this situation, the bigger problem persists.
“What we have now is a profoundly anti-democratic system, but we ought not succumb to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard emphasized. Policy decisions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this hyper-commercialized monster, and new policy decisions can tackle it.
Is this likely in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair will not confirm that the agency is independent? Overhaul is highly improbable now, but that is not to say it will be impossible forever.
Initiatives that support independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and prohibit the accumulation of media power in a handful of hands are achievable – they are essential for a functioning democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations like CNN cannot be tools in the most recent corporate chess match.
