This past Thursday night, as rumors swirled about a shooting at Brown University, the network's Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and pointing viewers to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Even though CNN is certainly not a flawless news source, her words resonated for a lot of people. It is one of the outlets where one can locate fact-based and largely trustworthy reporting – particularly during crises such as the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.
An Uncertain State Amid a Business Tug-of-War
Yet the news network, now middle-aged, finds itself in a uncertain situation as two massive media corporations vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the destiny of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with roots in many years of regulatory actions,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.
The debate about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a more important point.
“The narrative is crafted as a financial tale with key players as the main characters, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard said.
A Further Element: Political Influence
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” foe.
Think back to the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his team's disciplinary revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in press briefings.
Trump now claims that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.
He has grounds to prefer that company more. For one thing, it is controlled by David Ellison, son of the ally of Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
Paramount, owner of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that storied news network.
A Possibility of Further Instability
Notably, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a independent unit. Such a move could be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a safe harbor. That setup could set up CNN for a future sale. It never ends.
In the view of Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance stated that competition laws should disallow both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be harmful to the country, and both should be contested by the government,” Wu argued.
The Fundamental Issue and a Path Forward
Whatever happens regarding CNN, the larger issue persists.
“The present media landscape is a very system hostile to democracy, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard said. Regulatory choices – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can address it.
Can reform occur in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair 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.
Policies that bolster independent news organizations, aid local journalism, subsidize public media, and prohibit the accumulation of media power in too few hands are achievable – they are vital for a robust democracy.
In the world of media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations such as CNN cannot be pieces in the latest acquisition battle.
