On Thursday evening, as rumors swirled about an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While it is by no means a impeccable news source, her message resonated for a lot of people. It remains one of the organizations where you can find fact-based and generally reliable reporting – notably during crises like the one unfolding in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Position Amid a Business Battle
However CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a precarious situation as two massive media corporations battle over ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the destiny of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“Here is one more case of the fundamental flaws with origins in many years of regulatory actions,” said Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The debate about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a larger point.
“It gets presented as a business story with influential figures as the protagonists, but there is hardly any discussion of the public interest,” Pickard explained.
A Further Element: Political Influence
The CNN scenario is made more complex by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his primary “fake news” antagonist.
Remember the cries of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration's retaliatory suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now asserts that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from negative coverage and examination. That is one reason why he seems to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
There is a basis to like that bidder more. For one thing, it is run by David Ellison, son of the ally of Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
Paramount, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the conservative Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that storied news network.
A Future of Further Turmoil
Notably, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. That would be a relief to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a secure position. That arrangement could set up CNN for another sale. There is no finish line.
According to Timothy Wu, much of this is against the law, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance recently argued that competition laws should disallow both deals.
“Either merger would be detrimental to the country, and both should be opposed by regulators,” Wu stated.
The Core Problem and a Potential Solution
Regardless of the resolution regarding CNN, the underlying crisis persists.
“What we have now is a very anti-democratic system, but we must resist learned helplessness,” Pickard noted. Regulatory choices – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this overly commercial monster, and revised policy decisions can address it.
Is this likely in an era where the top communications regulator won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Change is very unlikely now, but that doesn’t mean it will be impossible forever.
Policies that strengthen independent news organizations, aid local journalism, finance public media, and prevent the consolidation of media power in a handful of hands are within reach – they are vital for a functioning democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations including CNN must not be tools in the most recent merger game.
