Late Thursday, amid swirling speculation concerning the Brown University gunman, the network's Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people 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 organizations where one can locate grounded and generally trustworthy reporting – particularly during crises like the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable Situation During a Business Struggle
But the news network, now middle-aged, finds itself in a vulnerable situation as two huge media corporations vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a high-risk game of corporate ownership, not as a question of what serves the information-seeking public.
“Here is one more case of the deep structural problems with origins in decades of regulatory actions,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Pennsylvania University.
The conjecture about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a more important point.
“The narrative is crafted as a business story with influential figures as the main characters, but there is hardly any discussion of the public interest,” Pickard said.
The Complicating Element: Donald Trump
The CNN scenario is made more complex by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his primary “fake news” foe.
Think back to the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration's retaliatory revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now claims that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from journalistic oversight. That is a factor in why he seems to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
There is a basis to like that company more. For one thing, it is controlled by David Ellison, son of the Trump-friendly Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
Paramount, parent of CBS News, also recently appointed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that venerable news network.
An Outcome of Continued Instability
Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a separate entity. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s hardly a safe harbor. That arrangement could set up CNN for another sale. The cycle continues.
In the view of Timothy Wu, much of this is against the law, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance recently argued that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be harmful to the country, and both should be contested by regulators,” Wu argued.
The Bigger Problem and a Way Ahead
Regardless of the resolution regarding CNN, the underlying crisis remains.
“Our current system is a highly structure that undermines democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to learned helplessness,” Pickard noted. Regulatory choices – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can tackle it.
Can reform occur in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Change is very unlikely now, but that is not to say it will never happen.
Policies that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, finance public media, and prevent the concentration 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 like CNN cannot be pawns in the most recent merger game.
