On Thursday evening, amid swirling speculation about the Brown University gunman, the network's Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, highlighting the uncertainty and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.
While the network is hardly a flawless news source, her message resonated for a lot of people. It is one of the outlets where one can locate reality-based and mostly reliable reporting – particularly during crises such as the one taking place close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
An Uncertain State During a High-Stakes Tug-of-War
However CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a precarious situation as two massive media empires compete for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a major game of mergers and acquisitions, rather than as a question of what serves the information-seeking public.
“Here is one more case of the deep structural problems with origins in many years of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a academic specializing in media policy at the Pennsylvania University.
The conjecture about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp 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 public interest,” Pickard added.
The Additional Layer: The Former President
The network's predicament is further muddied by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his chief “fake news” adversary.
Think back to the cries of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his administration's retaliatory withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in official meetings.
Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he seems to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.
There is a basis to like that suitor 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.
The company, parent of CBS News, also recently appointed the conservative Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.
An Outcome of Continued Turmoil
Notably, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a separate entity. That would be a relief to many at the network, but it’s hardly a guarantee of stability. That structure could pave the way for CNN for a future sale. The cycle continues.
If you ask Timothy Wu, much of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should prohibit both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be bad for the country, and both should be contested by the government,” Wu argued.
The Core Issue and a Way Ahead
No matter the outcome in this situation, the underlying crisis endures.
“Our current system is a very anti-democratic system, but we shouldn’t give in to learned helplessness,” Pickard emphasized. Government actions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can tackle it.
Is this likely in an era where the head of the FCC will not confirm that the agency is independent? Change is very unlikely now, but that is not to say it will never happen.
Initiatives that bolster independent news organizations, aid local journalism, fund public media, and prohibit the concentration of media power in a handful of hands are not only possible – they are necessary for a functioning democracy.
Regarding media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations such as CNN cannot be pieces in the latest acquisition battle.
