Late Thursday, amid swirling speculation regarding the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, highlighting the uncertainty and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a perfect news source, her words rang true to many. It stands as one of the outlets where one can locate grounded and mostly dependable reporting – particularly during breaking news situations such as the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable Position During a High-Stakes Struggle
However the news network, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a vulnerable situation as two giant media corporations compete for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a major game of corporate ownership, not as a question of what benefits the information-seeking public.
“This represents another instance of the profound systemic issues with origins in many years of governmental choices,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The speculation about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a more important point.
“It gets presented as a corporate drama with key players as the main characters, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard explained.
The Additional Layer: Donald Trump
The CNN scenario is further muddied 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 retaliatory revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from criticism and scrutiny. That is one reason why he seems to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
He has grounds to like that bidder more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the pro-Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
The company, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the conservative Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that storied news network.
An Outcome of More Uncertainty
Significantly, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a separate entity. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a guarantee of stability. That setup could pave the way for CNN for yet another acquisition. The cycle continues.
If you ask Timothy Wu, much of this is illegal, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance stated that competition laws should disallow both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be bad for the country, and both should be challenged by regulators,” Wu argued.
The Bigger Challenge and a Potential Solution
Regardless of the resolution in this situation, the bigger problem remains.
“What we have now is a profoundly structure that undermines democracy, but we must resist learned helplessness,” Pickard said. Government actions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this hyper-commercialized monster, and new policy decisions can address it.
Is this likely in an era where the top communications regulator refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Reform is very unlikely now, but that is not to say it will never happen.
Initiatives that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, finance public media, and outlaw the consolidation of media power in very few hands are not only possible – they are vital for a healthy democracy.
In the world of media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations including CNN must not be tools in the most recent corporate chess match.
