This past Thursday night, while unconfirmed reports spread about a shooting at Brown University, the network's Kaitlan Collins used social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Even though CNN is certainly not a impeccable news source, her words resonated for a lot of people. It remains one of the outlets where you can find reality-based and generally reliable reporting – notably during breaking news situations such as the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable Position Amid a Business Struggle
However CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a precarious situation as two massive media conglomerates compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the destiny of CNN has turned into a major game of mergers and acquisitions, rather than as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“Here is one more case of the fundamental flaws with roots in decades of regulatory actions,” noted Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a academic specializing in media policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The debate about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a larger point.
“It gets presented as a financial tale with influential figures as the protagonists, but there is very little discussion of the common good,” Pickard added.
A Further Factor: Political Influence
This situation is made more complex by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his primary “fake news” foe.
Recall the chants of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his team's disciplinary suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now claims that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from negative coverage and examination. That is one reason why he appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
He has grounds to favor that bidder more. For one thing, it is run 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 conservative Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that historic news network.
A Future of Further Uncertainty
It is important to note, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a standalone company. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s hardly a safe harbor. That setup could pave the way for CNN for yet another acquisition. There is no finish line.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a great deal 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 detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by the government,” Wu recently wrote.
The Fundamental Challenge and a Way Ahead
Regardless of the resolution with this particular battle, the larger issue persists.
“What we have now is a very anti-democratic system, but we must resist learned helplessness,” Pickard noted. Government actions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and different policy decisions can address it.
Is this likely in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Change is very unlikely now, but that doesn’t mean it will never happen.
Measures that strengthen independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and outlaw the concentration of media power in very few hands are achievable – they are vital for a healthy democracy.
Regarding media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations such as CNN shouldn’t be tools in the latest merger game.
