This past Thursday night, as rumors swirled regarding the Brown University gunman, the network's Kaitlan Collins took to social media, noting the confusion and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Although CNN is certainly not a flawless news source, her words resonated for a lot of people. It stands as one of the organizations where there exists reality-based and largely trustworthy reporting – notably during breaking news situations such as the one unfolding close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable State Amid a Business Battle
But the news network, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious situation as two huge media conglomerates battle over ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the future of CNN has turned into a high-risk game of corporate ownership, not as a question of what benefits the information-seeking public.
“Here is one more case of the fundamental flaws with roots in decades of regulatory actions,” noted Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The conjecture about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a more important point.
“It gets presented as a corporate drama with key players as the central actors, but there is very little discussion of the common good,” Pickard added.
The Complicating Element: Political Influence
The CNN scenario is complicated by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his primary “fake news” adversary.
Recall the cries of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his administration's retaliatory revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now says that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from journalistic oversight. That is part of why he appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
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 appointed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that storied news network.
An Outcome of More Instability
Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a safe harbor. That structure could set up CNN for a future sale. The cycle continues.
According to Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is illegal, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance stated that anti-trust laws should block both deals.
“Either merger would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by the government,” Wu recently wrote.
The Fundamental Challenge and a Potential Solution
Whatever happens regarding CNN, the bigger problem persists.
“What we have now is a profoundly structure that undermines democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard said. Government actions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this hyper-commercialized monster, and different policy decisions can tackle it.
Can reform occur in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Reform is very unlikely now, but that is not to say it will never happen.
Policies that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, finance public media, and prohibit the consolidation of media power in very few hands are not only possible – they are essential for a functioning democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations such as CNN shouldn’t be tools in the most recent corporate chess match.
