Late Thursday, amid swirling speculation regarding a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, pointing out the conflicting information and pointing viewers to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a perfect news source, her words rang true for a lot of people. It remains one of the organizations where one can locate grounded and mostly dependable reporting – notably during crises such as the one taking place near a New Hampshire storage facility.
An Uncertain Position During a Business Tug-of-War
Yet the news network, now middle-aged, finds itself in a precarious situation as two huge media conglomerates compete 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 business acquisition, instead of as a question of what helps the news-consuming public.
“Here is one more case of the fundamental flaws with roots in many years of governmental choices,” noted Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Pennsylvania University.
The conjecture about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a larger point.
“It gets presented as a business story with influential figures as the main characters, but there is scant discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard added.
The Additional Element: Donald Trump
This situation is made more complex by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his chief “fake news” antagonist.
Think back to the cries of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his administration’s punitive withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now asserts that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from negative coverage and examination. That is one reason why he seems to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
There is a basis to prefer that company 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, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that venerable news network.
A Future of Further Instability
Significantly, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a separate entity. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a safe harbor. That arrangement could position CNN for another sale. It never ends.
According to Timothy Wu, much of this is against the law, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that anti-trust laws should block both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be bad for the country, and both should be challenged by anti-trust authorities,” Wu argued.
The Core Issue and a Way Ahead
No matter the outcome in this situation, the bigger problem remains.
“The present media landscape is a profoundly structure that undermines democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to learned helplessness,” Pickard emphasized. Regulatory choices – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can fix it.
Can reform occur in an era where the top communications regulator will not confirm that the agency is independent? Overhaul is highly improbable now, but that doesn’t mean it will be impossible forever.
Policies that strengthen independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, finance public media, and prohibit the concentration of media power in too few hands are achievable – they are essential for a robust democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations such as CNN shouldn’t be pieces in the most recent corporate chess match.
