On Thursday evening, as rumors swirled about an incident at Brown University, the network's Kaitlan Collins used social media, highlighting the uncertainty and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While CNN is certainly not a flawless news source, her message rang true for a lot of people. It stands as one of the broadcasters where one can locate grounded and largely reliable reporting – notably during crises such as the one taking place close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable Position Amid a Corporate Tug-of-War
However CNN, now middle-aged, finds itself in a vulnerable state as two giant media empires vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the future of CNN has become part of a major game of mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what serves the information-seeking public.
“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with origins in many years of regulatory actions,” noted Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The debate about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a larger point.
“It gets presented as a business story with key players as the protagonists, but there is hardly any discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard said.
The Complicating Layer: The Former President
This situation is made more complex by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his main “fake news” foe.
Think back to the cries of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his administration’s punitive withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now claims that CNN needs new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will insulate him from journalistic oversight. That is a factor in why he seems to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
There is a basis 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.
The company, owner of CBS News, also recently placed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that storied news network.
A Future of More Instability
Notably, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a separate entity. That would be a relief to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a guarantee of stability. That arrangement could set up CNN for another sale. The cycle continues.
According to Timothy Wu, a lot of this is illegal, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance stated that competition laws should prohibit both deals.
“Either merger would be bad for the country, and both should be opposed by anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.
The Core Problem and a Path Forward
Regardless of the resolution regarding CNN, the underlying crisis remains.
“Our current system is a very structure that undermines democracy, but we ought not succumb to learned helplessness,” Pickard noted. Policy decisions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this overly commercial monster, and revised policy decisions can fix it.
Will that happen in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Overhaul is a distant prospect now, but that doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.
Initiatives that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, fund public media, and outlaw the concentration of media power in a handful of hands are achievable – they are essential for a robust democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations like CNN cannot be tools in the most recent merger game.
