🔗 Share this article

Late Thursday, as rumors swirled about the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and guiding the public to her network’s 9pm newscast.

Even though the network is hardly a flawless news source, her words seemed accurate for a lot of people. It is one of the outlets where one can locate fact-based and generally reliable reporting – especially during crises such as the one taking place in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Vulnerable Position Amid a Corporate Struggle

Yet CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a uncertain state as two huge media corporations vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

No matter the result, the fate of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of business acquisition, instead of as a question of what helps the news-consuming public.

“This is yet another example of the fundamental flaws 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 conjecture about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a larger point.

“The narrative is crafted as a financial tale with powerful individuals as the protagonists, but there is very little discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard said.

The Complicating Factor: Donald Trump

The CNN scenario is further muddied by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his primary “fake news” antagonist.

Recall the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration’s punitive suspension 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 protect him from negative coverage and examination. That is one reason why he seems to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.

There is a basis to like 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.

Paramount, owner of CBS News, also recently installed the conservative Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that storied news network.

A Future of Continued Uncertainty

Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a independent unit. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s hardly a guarantee of stability. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for a future sale. The cycle continues.

In the view of Timothy Wu, a lot of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance recently argued that competition laws should block both deals.

“Each proposed deal would be detrimental to the country, and both should be opposed by anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.

The Bigger Challenge and a Potential Solution

Whatever happens with this particular battle, the larger issue remains.

“What we have now is a very system hostile to democracy, but we ought not succumb to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Policy decisions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this hyper-commercialized monster, and revised policy decisions can fix it.

Will that happen in an era where the head of the FCC refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Change is very unlikely now, but that should not imply it will never happen.

Policies that bolster independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and outlaw the concentration of media power in a handful of hands are not only possible – they are essential for a functioning democracy.

In the world of media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations like CNN must not be pawns in the most recent acquisition battle.