This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation about the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and pointing viewers to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Although the network is hardly a perfect news source, her words seemed accurate to many. It remains one of the organizations where there exists grounded and mostly reliable reporting – especially during crises like the one unfolding in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
An Uncertain Position During a High-Stakes Tug-of-War
Yet CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a uncertain position as two massive media corporations battle over ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the future of CNN has been drawn into a high-risk game of mergers and acquisitions, rather than as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the fundamental flaws with roots in decades of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a academic specializing in media policy at the Pennsylvania University.
The debate about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a larger point.
“The narrative is crafted as a corporate drama with powerful individuals as the main characters, but there is hardly any discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard said.
The Additional Layer: The Former President
The network's predicament is made more complex by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his chief “fake news” antagonist.
Remember the cries of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his team's disciplinary revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will insulate him from criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
There is a basis to prefer that company more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the Trump-friendly Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
The company, owner of CBS News, also recently appointed the conservative Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that historic news network.
An Outcome of More Turmoil
Notably, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a separate entity. That would 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. It never ends.
According to Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is against the law, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance stated that competition laws should block both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be harmful to the country, and both should be challenged by the government,” Wu recently wrote.
The Bigger Challenge and a Path Forward
No matter the outcome in this situation, the underlying crisis endures.
“Our current system is a profoundly anti-democratic system, but we ought not succumb to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard noted. Government actions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this overly commercial monster, and new policy decisions can address it.
Can reform occur in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Reform is a distant prospect now, but that should not imply it will be impossible forever.
Measures that bolster independent news organizations, aid local journalism, finance public media, and outlaw the concentration of media power in very few hands are within reach – they are necessary for a functioning democracy.
In the world of media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations like CNN must not be pawns in the newest acquisition battle.
