This past Thursday night, while unconfirmed reports spread regarding an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Although it is by no means a perfect news source, her words seemed accurate to many. It remains one of the broadcasters where there exists fact-based and mostly trustworthy reporting – notably during crises such as the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable Situation During a Business Tug-of-War
Yet the news network, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious state as two massive media corporations compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the future of CNN has been drawn into a major game of corporate ownership, not as a question of what serves the information-seeking public.
“This is yet another example of the profound systemic issues with roots in decades of governmental choices,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The conjecture about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a larger point.
“It gets presented as a financial tale with powerful individuals as the protagonists, but there is scant discussion of the public interest,” Pickard said.
The Additional Factor: The Former President
The CNN scenario is further muddied by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his primary “fake news” adversary.
Remember the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his administration’s punitive revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from journalistic oversight. That is one reason why he seems to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
He has grounds to favor that suitor more. For one thing, it is controlled 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 conservative Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.
A Future of More Instability
Significantly, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. Such a move could be a relief to many at the network, but it’s far from a guarantee of stability. That setup could set up CNN for yet another acquisition. The cycle continues.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is against the law, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that anti-trust laws should prohibit both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by the government,” Wu argued.
The Bigger Challenge and a Way Ahead
Whatever happens in this situation, the bigger problem persists.
“What we have now is a highly structure that undermines democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard said. Regulatory choices – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can tackle it.
Is this likely in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair will not confirm that the agency is independent? Reform is a distant prospect now, but that doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.
Policies that bolster independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and prohibit the accumulation of media power in very few hands are achievable – they are vital for a healthy democracy.
Regarding media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations such as CNN cannot be tools in the newest corporate chess match.
