On Thursday evening, as rumors swirled about the Brown University gunman, the network's Kaitlan Collins took to social media, noting the confusion and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While CNN is certainly not a flawless news source, her message resonated for a lot of people. It stands as one of the outlets where there exists grounded and mostly reliable reporting – particularly during breaking news situations such as the one unfolding close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious State Amid a High-Stakes Struggle
But CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a uncertain state as two huge media conglomerates compete for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the future of CNN has been drawn into a major game of mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what benefits the information-seeking public.
“This represents another instance of the fundamental flaws with origins in many years of policy decisions,” noted Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a academic specializing in media policy at the Pennsylvania University.
The debate about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a larger point.
“It is often framed as a corporate drama with powerful individuals as the main characters, but there is very little discussion of the public interest,” Pickard added.
A Further Layer: The Former President
The network's predicament is complicated by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his primary “fake news” antagonist.
Recall the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration’s punitive withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now says that the network requires new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will protect him from negative coverage and examination. That is a factor in why he appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
There is a basis to favor that bidder more. For one thing, it is controlled by David Ellison, son of the pro-Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
Paramount, parent of CBS News, also recently appointed the conservative Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that historic news network.
A Future of Continued Turmoil
Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a safe harbor. That setup could pave the way for CNN for a future sale. It never ends.
If you ask Timothy Wu, much of this is against the law, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should prohibit both deals.
“Either merger would be harmful to the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.
The Fundamental Issue and a Path Forward
No matter the outcome regarding CNN, the underlying crisis remains.
“The present media landscape is a profoundly structure that undermines democracy, but we must resist the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard noted. Government actions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can fix it.
Can reform occur in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Change is highly improbable now, but that doesn’t mean it will be impossible forever.
Measures that support independent news organizations, aid local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the concentration of media power in a handful of hands are within reach – they are essential for a healthy democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations like CNN must not be pieces in the latest corporate chess match.
