This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation about a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, noting the confusion and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While it is by no means a impeccable news source, her statement rang true for a lot of people. It remains one of the broadcasters where you can find grounded and mostly dependable reporting – notably during crises such as the one developing close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
An Uncertain State Amid a Corporate Struggle
But CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a precarious situation as two huge media empires compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the fate of CNN has become part of a major game of corporate ownership, rather than as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“Here is one more case of the profound systemic issues with origins in many years of policy decisions,” noted Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The debate about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a broader point.
“It is often framed as a corporate drama with key players as the protagonists, but there is very little discussion of the public interest,” Pickard added.
The Complicating Layer: Political Influence
This situation is made more complex by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his chief “fake news” foe.
Recall the cries of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration’s punitive withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in White House 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 a factor in why he seems to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
Trump has reason to favor that company 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 right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that venerable news network.
A Future of Further Turmoil
Notably, if Netflix is successful, 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 position CNN for yet another acquisition. The cycle continues.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a lot of this is illegal, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance stated that competition laws should block both deals.
“Either merger would be bad for the country, and both should be opposed by the government,” Wu recently wrote.
The Bigger Issue and a Way Ahead
Whatever happens in this situation, the larger issue remains.
“Our current system is a highly structure that undermines democracy, but we must resist the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard emphasized. Regulatory choices – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can fix 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 support independent news organizations, aid local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the consolidation of media power in a handful of hands are achievable – they are essential for a functioning democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations like CNN shouldn’t be pawns in the most recent merger game.
