Late Thursday, while unconfirmed reports spread about an incident 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.
Although the network is hardly a perfect news source, her words seemed accurate for a lot of people. It remains one of the organizations where one can locate grounded and largely reliable reporting – notably during breaking news situations such as the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.
An Uncertain Position During a High-Stakes Battle
However the news network, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a vulnerable position as two massive media corporations vie for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a high-risk game of corporate ownership, not as a question of what helps the information-seeking public.
“This is yet another example of the deep structural problems with roots in many years of regulatory actions,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a academic specializing in media policy at the Penn.
The debate about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a more important point.
“The narrative is crafted as a corporate drama with influential figures as the central actors, but there is very little discussion of the public interest,” Pickard explained.
The Additional Layer: The Former President
This situation is further muddied by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his chief “fake news” adversary.
Think back to the cries of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his team's disciplinary revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now says that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will insulate him from negative coverage and examination. That is one reason why he appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
He has grounds to like that company more. For one thing, it is controlled 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 placed the conservative Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.
A Future of More Uncertainty
Significantly, if Netflix is successful, 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 not exactly a safe harbor. That arrangement could set up CNN for another sale. The cycle continues.
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 disallow both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be bad for the country, and both should be opposed by the government,” Wu argued.
The Core Challenge and a Potential Solution
No matter the outcome in this situation, the larger issue endures.
“What we have now is a very anti-democratic system, but we ought not succumb to learned helplessness,” Pickard noted. Government actions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this hyper-commercialized monster, and new policy decisions can fix it.
Will that happen in an era where the head of the FCC will not confirm that the agency is independent? Reform is very unlikely now, but that is not to say it will not happen in the future.
Measures that strengthen independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, finance public media, and prevent the consolidation of media power in too few hands are achievable – they are necessary for a robust democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations including CNN must not be pawns in the newest merger game.
