On Thursday evening, amid swirling speculation about an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to 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 rang true to many. It remains one of the organizations where you can find grounded and largely trustworthy reporting – notably during fast-moving events such as the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable State During a Corporate Tug-of-War
Yet CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious situation as two huge media conglomerates battle over ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the destiny of CNN has become part of a major game of business acquisition, rather than as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the profound systemic issues with roots in decades of regulatory actions,” stated Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Penn.
The speculation about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a more important point.
“It is often framed as a business story with influential figures as the protagonists, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard said.
The Complicating Layer: Donald Trump
The CNN scenario is complicated by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his chief “fake news” antagonist.
Recall the cries of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration's retaliatory withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now says that the network requires new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will shield him from criticism and scrutiny. That is a factor in why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
Trump has reason to like 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.
Paramount, owner of CBS News, also recently placed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that storied news network.
An Outcome of Further Instability
Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a independent unit. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a safe harbor. That arrangement could set up CNN for yet another acquisition. The cycle continues.
If you ask Timothy Wu, much of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should disallow both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be harmful to the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu stated.
The Bigger Issue and a Potential Solution
No matter the outcome with this particular battle, the bigger problem endures.
“What we have now is a highly system hostile to democracy, but we ought not succumb to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Government actions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this hyper-commercialized monster, and revised policy decisions can fix it.
Can reform occur in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair will not confirm that the agency is independent? Overhaul is a distant prospect now, but that is not to say it will not happen in the future.
Measures that bolster independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, subsidize public media, and prevent the consolidation of media power in a handful of hands are not only possible – they are vital for a healthy democracy.
In the world of media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations like CNN cannot be tools in the latest acquisition battle.
