This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation concerning a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While CNN is certainly not a impeccable news source, her statement rang true for a lot of people. It remains one of the organizations where one can locate fact-based and generally trustworthy reporting – particularly during breaking news situations such as the one unfolding close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
An Uncertain Position During a High-Stakes Struggle
Yet the news network, now 45 years old, finds itself in a uncertain position as two giant media conglomerates battle over ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with roots in many years of governmental choices,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The debate about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a more important point.
“It gets presented as a corporate drama with key players as the protagonists, but there is very little discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard added.
The Complicating Layer: The Former President
The CNN scenario is complicated by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his primary “fake news” foe.
Remember the cries 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 claims that the network requires new ownership. Many see this as a desire for ownership that will shield 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 prefer that company more. For one thing, it is led 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 right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that historic news network.
An Outcome of Continued Uncertainty
Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a independent unit. This might be a relief to many at the network, but it’s hardly a safe harbor. That arrangement could set up CNN for another sale. It never ends.
In the view of Timothy Wu, much of this is illegal, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance stated that competition laws should prohibit both deals.
“Either merger would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu stated.
The Core Issue and a Path Forward
Regardless of the resolution in this situation, the bigger problem persists.
“The present media landscape is a very anti-democratic system, but we shouldn’t give in to learned helplessness,” Pickard said. Policy decisions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can tackle it.
Will that happen in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Reform is a distant prospect 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 prohibit the accumulation of media power in a handful of hands are not only possible – they are vital for a healthy democracy.
Regarding media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations including CNN shouldn’t be pieces in the most recent merger game.
