Late Thursday, while unconfirmed reports spread concerning an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, highlighting the uncertainty and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.
Although CNN is certainly not a perfect news source, her words rang true for a lot of people. It is one of the organizations where there exists reality-based and generally reliable reporting – particularly during crises like the one taking place close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Situation During a High-Stakes Battle
However CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious state as two massive media corporations vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of corporate ownership, not 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 regulatory actions,” stated Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The debate about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a larger point.
“It gets presented as a corporate drama with key players as the main characters, but there is scant discussion of the common good,” Pickard added.
The Complicating Element: Donald Trump
The CNN scenario is further muddied by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his main “fake news” adversary.
Recall the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration's retaliatory suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will protect 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 hostile bid.
He has grounds to favor that bidder 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, owner of CBS News, also recently installed the conservative Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.
A Future of Further Instability
Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. This might be a relief to many at the network, but it’s far from a safe harbor. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for a future sale. It never ends.
In the view of Timothy Wu, much of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance stated that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.
“Either merger would be bad for the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu argued.
The Core Challenge and a Potential Solution
Regardless of the resolution in this situation, the larger issue endures.
“The present media landscape is a very system hostile to democracy, but we must resist learned helplessness,” Pickard said. Government actions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can address it.
Can reform occur in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Overhaul is a distant prospect now, but that is not to say it will be impossible forever.
Policies that strengthen independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the consolidation of media power in too few hands are not only possible – they are essential for a robust democracy.
In the world of media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations like CNN cannot be pieces in the newest merger game.
