Late Thursday, amid swirling speculation regarding an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.
Although the network is hardly a flawless news source, her statement seemed accurate for a lot of people. It stands as one of the outlets where you can find reality-based and mostly trustworthy reporting – particularly during breaking news situations such as the one unfolding in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.
A Precarious Position Amid a High-Stakes Tug-of-War
Yet CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a vulnerable state as two huge media empires vie for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.
Regardless of who wins, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a major game of business acquisition, not as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.
“This represents another instance of the profound systemic issues with origins in many years of regulatory actions,” noted Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Pennsylvania University.
The speculation about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a larger point.
“It is often framed as a business story with influential figures as the central actors, but there is scant discussion of the public interest,” Pickard explained.
The Complicating Factor: Political Influence
The network's predicament is further muddied by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance 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 revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in White House briefings.
Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will insulate him from criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he seems to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.
Trump has reason to favor that bidder more. For one thing, it is run 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, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that venerable news network.
A Possibility of Further Turmoil
Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a independent unit. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s hardly a secure position. That structure could set up CNN for another sale. It never ends.
If you ask Timothy Wu, much of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance stated that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.
“Both acquisition attempts would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by regulators,” Wu recently wrote.
The Core Challenge and a Path Forward
Regardless of the resolution with this particular battle, the larger issue persists.
“Our current system is a very system hostile to democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Policy decisions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this hyper-commercialized monster, and revised policy decisions can fix it.
Is this likely in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Change is highly improbable now, but that should not imply it will not happen in the future.
Policies that support independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, fund public media, and prohibit the concentration of media power in very few hands are within reach – they are necessary for a healthy democracy.
When it comes to media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations including CNN must not be tools in the latest corporate chess match.
