This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation regarding a shooting at Brown University, the network's Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, noting the confusion and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a perfect news source, her statement rang true to many. It stands as one of the organizations where there exists grounded and generally trustworthy reporting – notably during crises like the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable Situation During a Corporate Battle
However CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a vulnerable position as two huge media empires vie for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, rather than as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“This is yet another example of the fundamental flaws with origins in many years of regulatory actions,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The conjecture about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a broader point.
“It gets presented as a business story with key players as the main characters, but there is hardly any discussion of the public interest,” Pickard explained.
A Further Layer: The Former President
The CNN scenario is complicated by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his chief “fake news” antagonist.
Think back to the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his administration's retaliatory revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now claims that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from journalistic oversight. That is one reason why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
Trump has reason to like that company more. For one thing, it is run by David Ellison, son of the Trump-friendly Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
Paramount, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the conservative Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.
A Possibility of More Turmoil
It is important to note, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a independent unit. Such a move could be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a secure position. That arrangement could set up CNN for another sale. It never ends.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a lot of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance recently argued that anti-trust laws should prohibit both deals.
“Either merger would be bad for the country, and both should be opposed by the government,” Wu argued.
The Core Challenge and a Way Ahead
Whatever happens regarding CNN, the larger issue remains.
“Our current system is a very system hostile to democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to learned helplessness,” Pickard noted. Policy decisions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this hyper-commercialized monster, and new policy decisions can address it.
Will that happen in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Overhaul is very unlikely now, but that doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.
Measures that support independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the concentration of media power in a handful of hands are achievable – they are vital for a robust democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations such as CNN cannot be pawns in the latest acquisition battle.
