This past Thursday night, as rumors swirled regarding a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, pointing out the conflicting information and guiding the public to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a flawless news source, her words resonated for numerous observers. It is one of the outlets where you can find grounded and mostly dependable reporting – particularly during breaking news situations like the one taking place close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable Position Amid a Business Battle
However CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a vulnerable state as two giant media conglomerates vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the destiny of CNN has turned into a major game of mergers and acquisitions, rather than as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“Here is one more case of the fundamental flaws with origins in many years of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The debate about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a larger point.
“It gets presented as a corporate drama with key players as the main characters, but there is very little discussion of the common good,” Pickard said.
The Additional Layer: The Former President
This situation is further muddied by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his primary “fake news” adversary.
Think back to the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration’s punitive withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will insulate him from criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
There is a basis to favor that bidder more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the ally of Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
Paramount, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the conservative Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that venerable news network.
An Outcome of Further Uncertainty
Significantly, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a separate entity. This might be a relief to many at the network, but it’s far from a safe harbor. That arrangement could set up CNN for another sale. It never ends.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a lot of this is illegal, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance recently argued that competition laws should block both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be harmful to the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.
The Fundamental Problem and a Potential Solution
Regardless of the resolution in this situation, the larger issue endures.
“What we have now is a profoundly anti-democratic system, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard emphasized. Government actions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this hyper-commercialized monster, and revised policy decisions can fix it.
Is this likely in an era where the top communications regulator will not confirm that the agency is independent? Reform is very unlikely now, but that should not imply it will never happen.
Initiatives that bolster independent news organizations, aid local journalism, fund public media, and outlaw the accumulation of media power in very few hands are within reach – they are vital for a robust democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations like CNN shouldn’t be tools in the latest acquisition battle.
