Late Thursday, as rumors swirled about an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, pointing out the conflicting information and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a flawless news source, her words resonated for a lot of people. It remains one of the organizations where one can locate reality-based and mostly dependable reporting – particularly during fast-moving events like the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.
An Uncertain Situation During a Corporate Battle
Yet the news network, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a uncertain position as two massive media corporations compete for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of corporate ownership, rather than as a question of what helps the information-seeking public.
“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with origins in decades of regulatory actions,” said Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The debate about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a more important point.
“It is often framed as a corporate drama with influential figures as the protagonists, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard said.
The Complicating Factor: The Former President
The CNN scenario is made more complex by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his primary “fake news” antagonist.
Recall the chants of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration’s punitive revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will insulate him from criticism and scrutiny. That is a factor in why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
He has grounds to favor 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 placed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that historic news network.
A Possibility of Continued Turmoil
Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a independent unit. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a safe harbor. That structure could position CNN for another sale. The cycle continues.
If you ask Timothy Wu, much of this is against the law, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should prohibit both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be bad for the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.
The Bigger Problem and a Potential Solution
No matter the outcome regarding CNN, the underlying crisis remains.
“The present media landscape is a highly system hostile to democracy, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard emphasized. Regulatory choices – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this hyper-commercialized monster, and revised policy decisions can fix it.
Can reform occur in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Change is highly improbable now, but that is not to say it will not happen in the future.
Measures that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, finance public media, and prohibit the consolidation of media power in too few hands are within reach – they are necessary for a robust democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations like CNN cannot be tools in the most recent corporate chess match.
