This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation about the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, pointing out the conflicting information and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Although the network is hardly a impeccable news source, her message rang true for numerous observers. It stands as one of the outlets where there exists fact-based and generally dependable reporting – notably during fast-moving events such as the one developing close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
But CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a vulnerable position as two massive media corporations battle over ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, rather than as a question of what helps the news-consuming public.
“Here is one more case of the deep structural problems with origins in decades of policy decisions,” noted Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Pennsylvania University.
The conjecture about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a broader point.
“It gets presented as a financial tale with influential figures as the central actors, but there is very little discussion of the common good,” Pickard added.
The CNN scenario is complicated by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his primary “fake news” foe.
Recall the chants of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his team's disciplinary revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will insulate him from criticism and scrutiny. That is one reason why he seems to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
Trump has reason to prefer 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, parent of CBS News, also recently appointed the conservative Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that storied news network.
It is important to note, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a separate entity. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a guarantee of stability. That structure could set up CNN for yet another acquisition. There is no finish line.
According to Timothy Wu, a lot of this is illegal, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance stated that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by the government,” Wu argued.
Whatever happens in this situation, the larger issue persists.
“What we have now is a highly structure that undermines democracy, but we ought not succumb to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard said. Regulatory choices – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can address it.
Can reform occur in an era where the head of the FCC will not confirm that the agency is independent? Reform is highly improbable now, but that doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.
Measures that bolster independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, finance public media, and prevent the accumulation of media power in a handful of hands are not only possible – they are necessary for a robust democracy.
In the world of media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations such as CNN must not be tools in the most recent merger game.
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