This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation regarding an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, noting the confusion and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While CNN is certainly not a impeccable news source, her statement rang true for a lot of people. It is one of the outlets where there exists reality-based and generally dependable reporting – particularly during fast-moving events such as the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.
An Uncertain State During a Business Struggle
However CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a uncertain state as two massive media empires vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the fate of CNN has turned into a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, rather than as a question of what benefits the information-seeking public.
“This is yet another example of the profound systemic issues with roots in many years of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Penn.
The speculation 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 business story with key players as the main characters, but there is hardly any discussion of the public interest,” Pickard explained.
The Additional Factor: Donald Trump
The CNN scenario is further muddied by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his chief “fake news” adversary.
Remember the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration's retaliatory withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now claims that the network requires new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will insulate him from journalistic oversight. That is one reason why he appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
Trump has reason to favor that company 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.
The company, owner of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that historic news network.
An Outcome of Further Uncertainty
Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a separate entity. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s hardly a guarantee of stability. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for a future sale. It never ends.
According to Timothy Wu, a lot of this is illegal, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be bad for the country, and both should be opposed by anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.
The Core Issue and a Potential Solution
Whatever happens with this particular battle, the bigger problem endures.
“What we have now is a profoundly system hostile to democracy, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Policy decisions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this hyper-commercialized monster, and different policy decisions can tackle it.
Is this likely 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 doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.
Initiatives that strengthen independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, subsidize public media, and prohibit the accumulation of media power in a handful of hands are not only possible – they are vital for a robust democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations like CNN shouldn’t be pawns in the newest acquisition battle.
