This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation concerning a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, pointing out the conflicting information and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a perfect news source, her words resonated for a lot of people. It stands as one of the outlets where one can locate reality-based and mostly trustworthy reporting – especially during crises such as the one developing in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious State During a Business Struggle
Yet CNN, now middle-aged, finds itself in a uncertain situation as two massive media corporations compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the future of CNN has been drawn into a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, instead of as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“Here is one more case of the fundamental flaws with roots in decades of policy decisions,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Pennsylvania University.
The debate about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a broader point.
“The narrative is crafted as a business story with powerful individuals as the protagonists, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard added.
The Complicating Layer: Donald Trump
The network's predicament is made more complex by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his main “fake news” antagonist.
Think back to the chants of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will insulate him from journalistic oversight. That is a factor in why he appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
There is a basis to prefer that bidder more. For one thing, it is controlled by David Ellison, son of the Trump-friendly Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
The company, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the conservative Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that venerable news network.
A Future of Continued Turmoil
Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a independent unit. That would be a relief to many at the network, but it’s far from a safe harbor. That arrangement could set up CNN for a future sale. It never ends.
According to Timothy Wu, much of this is against the law, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance stated that competition laws should disallow both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be harmful to the country, and both should be challenged by the government,” Wu recently wrote.
The Bigger Problem and a Way Ahead
No matter the outcome in this situation, the bigger problem endures.
“What we have now is a very anti-democratic system, but we ought not succumb to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard said. Regulatory choices – originating in 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 Federal Communications Commission chair will not confirm that the agency is independent? Change is very unlikely now, but that is not to say it will be impossible forever.
Initiatives that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, finance public media, and prohibit the accumulation of media power in very few hands are not only possible – they are vital for a functioning democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations such as CNN cannot be pawns in the latest merger game.
