This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation concerning a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, pointing out the conflicting information and guiding the public to her network’s 9pm newscast.
Although the network is hardly a flawless news source, her words seemed accurate for a lot of people. It stands as one of the outlets where one can locate fact-based and mostly reliable reporting – particularly during fast-moving events such as the one developing in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable Situation During a Business Struggle
However CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a vulnerable situation as two massive media empires vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the fate of CNN has become part of a high-risk game of business acquisition, instead of as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“This is yet another example of the profound systemic issues with roots in decades of policy decisions,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The conjecture about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a more important point.
“The narrative is crafted as a corporate drama with powerful individuals as the main characters, but there is scant discussion of the public interest,” Pickard added.
The Additional Element: Political Influence
The network's predicament is complicated by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his chief “fake news” adversary.
Remember the chants of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now says that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from journalistic oversight. That is part of why he seems to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
Trump has reason to like that suitor 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, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that storied news network.
An Outcome of Continued Uncertainty
Notably, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a standalone company. This might be a relief to many at the network, but it’s far from a secure position. That setup could set up CNN for another sale. It never ends.
If you ask Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is against the law, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance recently argued that competition laws should prohibit both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be detrimental to the country, and both should be challenged by the government,” Wu argued.
The Core Problem and a Way Ahead
No matter the outcome with this particular battle, the larger issue persists.
“What we have now is a profoundly system hostile to democracy, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard said. Government actions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can tackle it.
Will that happen in an era where the head of the FCC refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Overhaul is highly improbable now, but that doesn’t mean it will be impossible forever.
Initiatives that bolster independent news organizations, aid local journalism, subsidize public media, and outlaw the consolidation of media power in too few hands are achievable – they are necessary for a robust democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations like CNN cannot be pieces in the latest corporate chess match.
