This past Thursday night, as rumors swirled regarding a shooting at Brown University, the network's Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, pointing out the conflicting information and guiding the public to her network’s 9pm newscast.
Although it is by no means a perfect news source, her words rang true for a lot of people. It stands as one of the broadcasters where there exists reality-based and largely reliable reporting – particularly during crises like the one developing in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
An Uncertain Situation During a High-Stakes Struggle
Yet the news network, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a precarious state as two giant media empires compete for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
No matter the result, the destiny of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of corporate ownership, instead of as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“Here is one more case of the deep structural problems with roots in many years of regulatory actions,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Penn.
The conjecture about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a broader point.
“It gets presented as a financial tale with powerful individuals as the central actors, but there is scant discussion of the public interest,” Pickard explained.
A Further Element: The Former President
The CNN scenario is complicated by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his chief “fake news” adversary.
Remember the chants of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his team's disciplinary suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from journalistic oversight. That is a factor in why he seems to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
There is a basis to favor that bidder more. For one thing, it is controlled by David Ellison, son of the pro-Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
Paramount, owner of CBS News, also recently placed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that storied news network.
A Possibility of Continued Uncertainty
Notably, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a separate entity. Such a move could be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a secure position. That setup could position CNN for a future sale. There is no finish line.
If you ask Timothy Wu, much of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should disallow both deals.
“Each proposed deal would be bad for the country, and both should be challenged by anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.
The Fundamental Challenge and a Path Forward
No matter the outcome in this situation, the underlying crisis endures.
“Our current system is a profoundly system hostile to democracy, but we ought not succumb to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard said. Government actions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this overly commercial monster, and different policy decisions can address it.
Will that happen in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Reform is a distant prospect now, but that should not imply it will never happen.
Measures that strengthen independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the consolidation of media power in very few hands are achievable – they are essential for a functioning democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations like CNN must not be pawns in the newest corporate chess match.
