Late Thursday, as rumors swirled concerning an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, pointing out the conflicting information and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While CNN is certainly not a impeccable news source, her words rang true to many. It remains one of the organizations where you can find grounded and largely trustworthy reporting – especially during crises like the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Situation During a Corporate Battle
However the news network, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a vulnerable situation as two huge media corporations compete for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the fate of CNN has turned into a high-risk game of mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what benefits the information-seeking public.
“Here is one more case of the deep structural problems with origins in decades of policy decisions,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The conjecture about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a larger point.
“It gets presented as a business story with influential figures as the main characters, but there is very little discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard said.
The Complicating Factor: The Former President
The CNN scenario is complicated by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his main “fake news” adversary.
Think back to the chants of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his team's disciplinary suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now says 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 appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
Trump has reason to prefer that bidder 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.
The company, owner of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that storied news network.
An Outcome of Further Instability
Significantly, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a independent unit. This might be a relief to many at the network, but it’s hardly a guarantee of stability. That setup could set up CNN for a future sale. It never ends.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should block both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be harmful to the country, and both should be opposed by the government,” Wu recently wrote.
The Core Issue and a Path Forward
Whatever happens with this particular battle, the larger issue persists.
“Our current system is a very system hostile to democracy, but we ought not succumb to learned helplessness,” Pickard emphasized. Policy decisions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can fix it.
Can reform occur in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Change is a distant prospect now, but that is not to say it will not happen in the future.
Measures that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, subsidize public media, and prohibit the consolidation of media power in very few hands are within reach – they are essential for a healthy democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations like CNN shouldn’t be tools in the newest merger game.
