This past Thursday night, while unconfirmed reports spread concerning the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, pointing out the conflicting information and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a impeccable news source, her statement resonated for a lot of people. It remains one of the broadcasters where there exists fact-based and mostly reliable reporting – particularly during crises such as the one unfolding close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Situation During a High-Stakes Tug-of-War
However CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a precarious state as two huge media empires vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a high-stakes game of business acquisition, instead of as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“This is yet another example 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 which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a larger point.
“It is often framed as a financial tale with powerful individuals as the central actors, but there is scant discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard explained.
The Complicating Layer: Donald Trump
The CNN scenario is further muddied by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his chief “fake news” adversary.
Remember the cries of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration’s punitive suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now asserts that CNN needs new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will protect him from criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
Trump has reason 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, parent of CBS News, also recently placed the conservative Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that historic news network.
A Future of Continued Instability
Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a standalone company. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a safe harbor. That structure could position CNN for a future sale. There is no finish line.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a great deal 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 disallow both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be harmful to the country, and both should be challenged by the government,” Wu argued.
The Bigger Problem and a Way Ahead
Whatever happens with this particular battle, the larger issue persists.
“What we have now is a highly anti-democratic system, but we ought not succumb to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard said. Policy decisions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can tackle it.
Can reform occur in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Change is very unlikely now, but that should not imply it will not happen in the future.
Initiatives that strengthen independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, subsidize public media, and outlaw the concentration of media power in too few hands are achievable – they are necessary for a robust democracy.
Regarding media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations like CNN cannot be pawns in the most recent acquisition battle.
