Late Thursday, amid swirling speculation concerning an incident at Brown University, the network's Kaitlan Collins used social media, noting the confusion and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Even though CNN is certainly not a perfect news source, her words seemed accurate to many. It remains one of the outlets where there exists reality-based and mostly trustworthy reporting – notably during crises like the one unfolding close to a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Vulnerable Position Amid a High-Stakes Battle
But the news network, now middle-aged, finds itself in a uncertain situation as two giant media conglomerates vie for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the future of CNN has become part of a major game of corporate ownership, rather than as a question of what helps the information-seeking public.
“Here is one more case of the profound systemic issues with origins in decades of regulatory actions,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The debate about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a broader point.
“It gets presented as a financial tale with key players as the central actors, but there is hardly any discussion of the public interest,” Pickard added.
A Further Layer: Donald Trump
The network's predicament is made more complex by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his primary “fake news” foe.
Think back to the cries of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration's retaliatory withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now asserts that CNN needs new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will protect him from journalistic oversight. That is one reason why he appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
There is a basis to like that suitor more. For one thing, it is controlled by David Ellison, son of the Trump-friendly Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.
The company, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that storied news network.
A Possibility of Further 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 far from a safe harbor. That setup could set up CNN for a future sale. It never ends.
If you ask Timothy Wu, much of this is illegal, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should prohibit both deals.
“Either merger would be bad for the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.
The Bigger Issue and a Potential Solution
Regardless of the resolution with this particular battle, the bigger problem endures.
“What we have now is a profoundly anti-democratic system, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Government actions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can fix it.
Can reform occur in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Reform is highly improbable now, but that should not imply it will not happen in the future.
Policies that bolster independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and prohibit the accumulation of media power in a handful of hands are not only possible – they are necessary for a healthy democracy.
Regarding media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations including CNN cannot be pawns in the latest merger game.
