This past Thursday night, as rumors swirled regarding the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, noting the confusion and guiding the public to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While CNN is certainly not a flawless news source, her words seemed accurate for a lot of people. It is one of the organizations where one can locate fact-based and mostly reliable reporting – notably during fast-moving events such as the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable Situation Amid a Business Battle
But the news network, now middle-aged, finds itself in a uncertain situation as two giant media conglomerates vie for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the future of CNN has turned into a high-stakes game of corporate ownership, instead of as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the fundamental flaws with origins in decades of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy 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 larger point.
“It gets presented as a financial tale with key players as the main characters, but there is hardly any discussion of the public interest,” Pickard explained.
A Further Factor: Donald Trump
The CNN scenario is further muddied by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his primary “fake news” antagonist.
Remember the chants of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his administration's retaliatory suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from journalistic oversight. 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 led 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, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.
An Outcome of Further Instability
It is important to note, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a separate entity. That would 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 a future 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 wrote recently that competition laws should block both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be bad for the country, and both should be contested by the government,” Wu argued.
The Fundamental Problem and a Path Forward
Regardless of the resolution in this situation, the underlying crisis remains.
“The present media landscape is a profoundly structure that undermines democracy, but we ought not succumb to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard emphasized. Government actions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build 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 should not imply it will not happen in the future.
Measures that strengthen independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, finance public media, and prohibit the accumulation 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 like CNN must not be pawns in the most recent corporate chess match.
