This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation about an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, highlighting the uncertainty and guiding the public to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a impeccable news source, her message seemed accurate for a lot of people. It remains one of the outlets where one can locate fact-based and generally dependable reporting – particularly during fast-moving events like the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable Position During a Business Struggle
But the news network, now middle-aged, finds itself in a precarious position as two huge media corporations vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the destiny of CNN has turned into a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, instead of as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“This is yet another example of the profound systemic issues with origins in many years of governmental choices,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The conjecture about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a more important point.
“It gets presented as a business story with powerful individuals as the protagonists, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard said.
The Complicating Layer: Donald Trump
The network's predicament is complicated by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his main “fake news” foe.
Remember the chants of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in official meetings.
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 seems to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
He has grounds to favor that suitor 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 installed the conservative Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that historic news network.
A Possibility of Continued Instability
Notably, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a separate entity. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s hardly a secure position. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for another sale. The cycle continues.
According to Timothy Wu, much of this is illegal, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should prohibit both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be harmful to the country, and both should be contested by the government,” Wu recently wrote.
The Fundamental Challenge and a Potential Solution
No matter the outcome with this particular battle, the bigger problem remains.
“The present media landscape is a very anti-democratic system, but we must resist the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard emphasized. Regulatory choices – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this hyper-commercialized monster, and different policy decisions can address it.
Will that happen in an era where the top communications regulator won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Reform is very unlikely now, but that doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.
Policies that support independent news organizations, aid local journalism, subsidize public media, and prevent the accumulation of media power in a handful of hands are achievable – they are necessary for a healthy democracy.
In the world of media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations including CNN cannot be pieces in the most recent acquisition battle.
