🔗 Share this article

On Thursday evening, while unconfirmed reports spread concerning the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, highlighting the uncertainty and pointing viewers to her channel's 9pm newscast.

While it is by no means a perfect news source, her words rang true for a lot of people. It remains one of the organizations where there exists grounded and mostly reliable reporting – especially during breaking news situations like the one developing close to a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Vulnerable Situation Amid a High-Stakes Struggle

But CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a vulnerable situation as two giant media corporations compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

Regardless of who wins, the destiny of CNN has turned into a high-risk game of mergers and acquisitions, rather than as a question of what helps the news-consuming public.

“Here is one more case of the profound systemic issues with origins in decades of governmental choices,” stated Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Pennsylvania University.

The conjecture about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a larger point.

“The narrative is crafted as a corporate drama with key players as the central actors, but there is hardly any discussion of the public interest,” Pickard explained.

The Additional Element: Donald Trump

The CNN scenario is complicated by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his main “fake news” foe.

Recall the cries of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration’s punitive revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in press briefings.

Trump now says that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will insulate him from negative coverage and examination. That is part of why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.

There is a basis to prefer that company more. For one thing, it is run by David Ellison, son of the pro-Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.

Paramount, parent of CBS News, also recently appointed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.

A Future of Continued Instability

Notably, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a separate entity. Such a move could be a relief to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a safe harbor. That structure could set up CNN for yet another acquisition. It never ends.

In the view of Timothy Wu, much of this is illegal, 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 regulators,” Wu recently wrote.

The Bigger Challenge and a Potential Solution

No matter the outcome regarding CNN, the underlying crisis remains.

“What we have now is a profoundly system hostile to democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Regulatory choices – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this overly commercial monster, and different policy decisions can address it.

Will that happen in an era where the top communications regulator will not confirm that the agency is independent? Reform is very unlikely now, but that should not imply it will be impossible forever.

Measures that bolster independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and prohibit the consolidation of media power in too few hands are achievable – they are essential for a functioning democracy.

When it comes to media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations such as CNN must not be pawns in the newest acquisition battle.