On Thursday evening, amid swirling speculation about the Brown University gunman, the network's Kaitlan Collins used social media, noting the confusion and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.
Even though CNN is certainly not a impeccable news source, her words resonated to many. It remains one of the outlets where one can locate grounded and generally reliable reporting – especially during crises such as the one developing in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious State Amid a Business Tug-of-War
Yet CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a uncertain situation as two giant media corporations compete for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the future of CNN has turned into a major game of mergers and acquisitions, instead of as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the fundamental flaws with origins in decades of governmental choices,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The conjecture about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a larger point.
“It gets presented as a corporate drama with powerful individuals as the central actors, but there is hardly any discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard added.
A Further Layer: Donald Trump
The network's predicament is made more complex by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his primary “fake news” antagonist.
Think back to the cries of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now claims that the network requires new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will insulate him from journalistic oversight. That is part of why he appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
Trump has reason to favor that company 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, owner of CBS News, also recently placed the conservative Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that historic news network.
A Future of More Turmoil
It is important to note, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a standalone company. Such a move could be a relief to many at the network, but it’s hardly a safe harbor. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for yet another acquisition. It never ends.
According to Timothy Wu, a lot of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance recently argued that competition laws should block both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be bad for the country, and both should be opposed by anti-trust authorities,” Wu stated.
The Core Challenge and a Way Ahead
No matter the outcome in this situation, the underlying crisis remains.
“The present media landscape is a highly structure that undermines democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard noted. Policy decisions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can tackle it.
Will that happen 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 never happen.
Measures that bolster independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, subsidize public media, and prohibit the concentration of media power in a handful of hands are not only possible – they are necessary for a functioning democracy.
In the world of media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations like CNN cannot be tools in the latest acquisition battle.
