This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation about an incident at Brown University, the network's Kaitlan Collins used social media, highlighting the uncertainty and guiding the public to her network’s 9pm newscast.
Even though the network is hardly a perfect news source, her statement resonated for a lot of people. It is one of the organizations where one can locate reality-based and largely reliable reporting – especially during crises such as the one unfolding close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Situation Amid a Business Struggle
Yet CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a precarious position as two huge media corporations compete for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the future of CNN has been drawn into a high-stakes game of corporate ownership, not as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the fundamental flaws with origins in many years of policy decisions,” noted Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Pennsylvania University.
The conjecture about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a more important point.
“It gets presented as a financial tale with influential figures as the protagonists, but there is scant discussion of the public interest,” Pickard added.
The Additional Layer: The Former President
This situation is complicated by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his main “fake news” adversary.
Remember the cries of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration’s punitive revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now says that the network requires new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will shield him from journalistic oversight. That is part of why he seems to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
He has grounds to like that suitor more. For one thing, it is run 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 placed the conservative Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that storied news network.
An Outcome of Continued Turmoil
It is important to note, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a independent unit. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a secure position. That arrangement could position CNN for a future sale. There is no finish line.
If you ask Timothy Wu, a lot 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 bad for the country, and both should be opposed by anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.
The Fundamental Issue and a Way Ahead
No matter the outcome in this situation, the underlying crisis remains.
“The present media landscape is a highly structure that undermines democracy, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Government actions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this hyper-commercialized monster, and revised policy decisions can address it.
Is this likely in an era where the top communications regulator won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Overhaul is very unlikely now, but that is not to say it will never happen.
Measures that bolster independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and prohibit the concentration of media power in a handful of hands are achievable – they are vital for a healthy democracy.
In the world of media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations including CNN shouldn’t be pieces in the latest corporate chess match.
