On Thursday evening, amid swirling speculation regarding the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Even though the network is hardly a perfect news source, her message resonated to many. It remains one of the organizations where you can find grounded and mostly reliable reporting – especially during breaking news situations such as the one taking place close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Position Amid a High-Stakes Struggle
However CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a vulnerable state as two huge media empires vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the fate of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of business acquisition, rather than as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with roots in decades of regulatory actions,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Pennsylvania University.
The speculation about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a more important point.
“It gets presented as a financial tale with influential figures as the protagonists, but there is scant discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard explained.
A Further Element: The Former President
The network's predicament is complicated by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his main “fake news” antagonist.
Think back to the cries of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his administration's retaliatory revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from negative coverage and examination. That is part of why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
There is a basis to like that suitor more. For one thing, it is run by David Ellison, son of the ally of Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
The company, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that storied news network.
A Possibility of Continued Uncertainty
Significantly, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a independent unit. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a guarantee of stability. That setup could position CNN for another sale. There is no finish line.
If you ask Timothy Wu, much of this is against the law, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should disallow both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be detrimental to the country, and both should be challenged by regulators,” Wu recently wrote.
The Core Problem and a Potential Solution
Regardless of the resolution regarding CNN, the larger issue endures.
“What we have now is a highly anti-democratic system, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Government actions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this overly commercial monster, and different policy decisions can tackle it.
Can reform occur in an era where the top communications regulator will not confirm that the agency is independent? Change is a distant prospect now, but that doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.
Measures that support independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, finance public media, and prevent the accumulation of media power in too few hands are achievable – they are necessary for a healthy democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations like CNN shouldn’t be pieces in the latest acquisition battle.
