Late Thursday, amid swirling speculation concerning the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a perfect news source, her message seemed accurate for a lot of people. It stands as one of the outlets where there exists grounded and mostly dependable reporting – notably during fast-moving events like the one unfolding close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable State During a Business Tug-of-War
However the news network, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a vulnerable state as two giant media empires battle over ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the fate of CNN has turned into a high-stakes game of business acquisition, rather than as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with origins in many years of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a academic specializing in media policy at the Pennsylvania University.
The conjecture about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a more important point.
“It is often framed as a business story with key players as the protagonists, but there is scant discussion of the public interest,” Pickard added.
A Further Factor: The Former President
The network's predicament is made more complex by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his primary “fake news” foe.
Recall the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring 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 a factor in why he seems to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
There is a basis to prefer that suitor more. For one thing, it is controlled 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 right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that venerable news network.
An Outcome of Continued Uncertainty
Notably, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a separate entity. Such a move could be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a secure position. That setup could pave the way for CNN for another sale. The cycle continues.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is illegal, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance recently argued that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by regulators,” Wu recently wrote.
The Bigger Issue and a Way Ahead
No matter the outcome regarding CNN, the larger issue endures.
“What we have now is a highly system hostile to democracy, but we ought not succumb to learned helplessness,” Pickard noted. Regulatory choices – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this hyper-commercialized monster, and new policy decisions can address it.
Is this likely in an era where the top communications regulator will not confirm that the agency is independent? Reform is a distant prospect now, but that doesn’t mean it will never happen.
Measures that support independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, subsidize public media, and prohibit the concentration of media power in very few 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 cannot be tools in the newest corporate chess match.
