This past Thursday night, while unconfirmed reports spread concerning a shooting at Brown University, the network's Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, noting the confusion and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While it is by no means a impeccable news source, her words seemed accurate for a lot of people. It remains one of the outlets where you can find fact-based and largely reliable reporting – particularly during crises like the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable Situation During a Business Battle
Yet CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a precarious situation as two giant media empires vie for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has become part of a high-risk game of corporate ownership, not as a question of what helps the information-seeking public.
“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with origins in many years of policy decisions,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The conjecture about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a larger point.
“It gets presented as a business story with key players as the protagonists, but there is very little discussion of the public interest,” Pickard added.
A Further Factor: Political Influence
The network's predicament is further muddied by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his chief “fake news” foe.
Recall the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration’s punitive revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now asserts that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will insulate him from criticism and scrutiny. That is a factor in why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
There is a basis to prefer that company 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 right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that storied news network.
A Future of Continued Uncertainty
Notably, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a independent unit. Such a move could be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a safe harbor. That arrangement could position CNN for another sale. It never ends.
According to Timothy Wu, a lot of this is against the law, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance recently argued that anti-trust laws should prohibit both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be harmful to the country, and both should be opposed by regulators,” Wu recently wrote.
The Fundamental Challenge and a Potential Solution
Whatever happens in this situation, the underlying crisis endures.
“What we have now is a very system hostile to democracy, but we ought not succumb to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Policy decisions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and different policy decisions can tackle it.
Will that happen in an era where the top communications regulator refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Overhaul is highly improbable now, but that should not imply it will be impossible forever.
Measures that support independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and outlaw the accumulation of media power in very few hands are not only possible – they are vital for a robust democracy.
In the world of media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations like CNN shouldn’t be pieces in the latest acquisition battle.
