This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation regarding an incident at Brown University, the network's Kaitlan Collins used social media, highlighting the uncertainty and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.
While it is by no means a perfect news source, her words seemed accurate for a lot of people. It is one of the outlets where you can find grounded and generally dependable reporting – especially during fast-moving events like the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Position Amid a Corporate Tug-of-War
However the news network, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a vulnerable position as two massive media empires battle over ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a high-risk game of business acquisition, not as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with origins in many years of governmental choices,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The debate about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a broader point.
“It is often framed as a business story with key players as the main characters, but there is hardly any discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard said.
The Complicating Factor: The Former President
The network's predicament is further muddied by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his primary “fake news” adversary.
Think back to the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration's retaliatory revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now claims 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 appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
There is a basis to like that company 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 placed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that storied news network.
A Future of Continued Uncertainty
Significantly, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a separate entity. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a secure position. That structure could pave the way for CNN for yet another acquisition. There is no finish line.
If you ask Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is against the law, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance stated that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be bad for the country, and both should be challenged by the government,” Wu recently wrote.
The Fundamental Challenge and a Potential Solution
No matter the outcome regarding CNN, the bigger problem endures.
“The present media landscape is a very anti-democratic system, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard emphasized. Government actions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can fix it.
Will that happen in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Overhaul is a distant prospect now, but that doesn’t mean it will never happen.
Policies that strengthen independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, finance public media, and prevent the accumulation of media power in very few hands are within reach – they are essential for a functioning democracy.
In the world of media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations including CNN must not be pawns in the latest corporate chess match.
