On Thursday evening, as rumors swirled about an incident at Brown University, the network's Kaitlan Collins took to social media, pointing out the conflicting information and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a perfect news source, her words rang true for a lot of people. It is one of the organizations where one can locate grounded and generally dependable reporting – notably during breaking news situations like the one taking place near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable State During a Business Tug-of-War
However CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a precarious position as two giant media corporations compete for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the future of CNN has been drawn into a high-stakes game of business acquisition, rather than as a question of what serves the information-seeking public.
“This represents another instance of the profound systemic issues with origins in decades of policy decisions,” noted Victor Pickard, writer 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 – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a more important point.
“It gets presented as a financial tale with key players as the main characters, but there is scant discussion of the common good,” Pickard said.
The Additional Layer: Donald Trump
This situation is complicated by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his primary “fake news” adversary.
Recall the chants of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration’s punitive revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now asserts 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 support Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
Trump has reason to like that suitor more. For one thing, it is run 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 conservative Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that storied news network.
A Future of Further Uncertainty
Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a standalone company. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a secure position. That setup could set up CNN for another sale. The cycle continues.
According to Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is illegal, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should block both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be bad for the country, and both should be opposed by regulators,” Wu recently wrote.
The Core Challenge and a Way Ahead
Whatever happens with this particular battle, the larger issue remains.
“Our current system is a highly anti-democratic system, but we shouldn’t give in to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Regulatory choices – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this overly commercial monster, and different policy decisions can address it.
Can reform occur in an era where the head of the FCC refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Reform is highly improbable now, but that should not imply it will never happen.
Measures that support independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, fund public media, and outlaw the accumulation of media power in too few hands are achievable – they are vital for a functioning democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations including CNN must not be pawns in the most recent acquisition battle.
