On Thursday evening, while unconfirmed reports spread about an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, highlighting the uncertainty and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.
Although it is by no means a impeccable news source, her message seemed accurate for numerous observers. It stands as one of the broadcasters where one can locate grounded and largely reliable reporting – particularly during crises such as the one unfolding close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Position Amid a Corporate Struggle
Yet the news network, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious state as two massive media conglomerates vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the future of CNN has turned into a high-risk game of corporate ownership, instead of as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“This is yet another example of the fundamental flaws with roots in decades of policy decisions,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a academic specializing in media policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The conjecture about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a broader point.
“It gets presented as a corporate drama with powerful individuals as the main characters, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard added.
The Complicating Factor: The Former President
The CNN scenario is further muddied by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his main “fake news” foe.
Remember the chants of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration’s punitive revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now claims that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from criticism and scrutiny. That is one reason why he appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
He has grounds to like 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.
The company, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that venerable news network.
A Possibility of More Instability
Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a standalone company. Such a move could be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a secure position. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for another sale. The cycle continues.
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 disallow both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be bad for the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.
The Core Problem and a Path Forward
Whatever happens regarding CNN, the larger issue persists.
“The present media landscape is a profoundly anti-democratic system, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard emphasized. Regulatory choices – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this hyper-commercialized monster, and new policy decisions can fix it.
Will that happen in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair will not confirm that the agency is independent? Change is very unlikely now, but that should not imply it will never happen.
Measures that strengthen independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, subsidize public media, and outlaw the concentration of media power in very few hands are not only possible – they are necessary for a functioning democracy.
Regarding media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations including CNN must not be pawns in the most recent merger game.
