🔗 Share this article

This past Thursday night, as rumors swirled regarding a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and pointing viewers to her channel's 9pm newscast.

Although the network is hardly a perfect news source, her statement rang true to many. It stands as one of the outlets where one can locate grounded and mostly reliable reporting – especially during crises like the one developing in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Precarious State Amid a Business Tug-of-War

But CNN, now middle-aged, finds itself in a vulnerable situation as two huge media corporations compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

No matter the result, the future of CNN has been drawn into a high-risk game of mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what serves the information-seeking public.

“This is yet another example of the fundamental flaws with roots in many years of governmental choices,” stated Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

The conjecture about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a broader point.

“It gets presented as a financial tale with powerful individuals as the main characters, but there is very little discussion of the public interest,” Pickard explained.

A Further Factor: Political Influence

The CNN scenario is further muddied by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his chief “fake news” foe.

Recall the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in White House briefings.

Trump now claims that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will insulate him from negative coverage and examination. That is one reason why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.

Trump has reason to favor that company more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the Trump-friendly Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.

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

An Outcome of Further Turmoil

Significantly, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a standalone company. That would be a relief to many at the network, but it’s hardly a safe harbor. That structure could position CNN for yet another acquisition. The cycle continues.

In the view of Timothy Wu, a lot of this is illegal, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance stated that anti-trust 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 Core Problem and a Potential Solution

No matter the outcome in this situation, the bigger problem persists.

“What we have now is a highly structure that undermines democracy, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard emphasized. Policy decisions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can tackle it.

Is this likely in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Reform is very unlikely now, but that doesn’t mean it will never happen.

Initiatives that support independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the accumulation of media power in a handful of hands are not only possible – they are vital for a healthy democracy.

In the world of media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations including CNN shouldn’t be tools in the newest acquisition battle.