🔗 Share this article

Late Thursday, amid swirling speculation about an incident at Brown University, the network's Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, highlighting the uncertainty and pointing viewers to her channel's 9pm newscast.

While CNN is certainly not a impeccable news source, her words resonated to many. It remains one of the organizations where there exists reality-based and generally trustworthy reporting – particularly during fast-moving events such as the one developing in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Vulnerable Situation During a Business Struggle

However CNN, now middle-aged, finds itself in a precarious state as two huge media conglomerates compete for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.

Whatever the outcome, the destiny of CNN has turned into a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, rather than as a question of what helps the information-seeking public.

“Here is one more case of the deep structural problems with roots in many years of policy decisions,” stated Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Penn.

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

“The narrative is crafted as a business story with influential figures as the main characters, but there is very little discussion of the public interest,” Pickard added.

A Further Layer: The Former President

This situation is complicated by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his chief “fake news” foe.

Remember the cries of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration's retaliatory suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in official meetings.

Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from criticism and scrutiny. That is one reason why he seems to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.

Trump has reason to favor that bidder 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 placed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.

A Possibility of Further Instability

Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. Such a move could be a relief to many at the network, but it’s hardly a safe harbor. That structure could position CNN for another sale. It never ends.

If you ask Timothy Wu, a lot of this is illegal, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance recently argued that competition laws should block both deals.

“Both acquisition attempts would be detrimental to the country, and both should be opposed by anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.

The Core Problem and a Path Forward

Regardless of the resolution in this situation, the larger issue remains.

“Our current system is a highly structure that undermines democracy, but we ought not succumb to learned helplessness,” Pickard emphasized. Regulatory choices – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and different policy decisions can fix it.

Will that happen in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Overhaul is very unlikely now, but that is not to say it will be impossible forever.

Initiatives that strengthen independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, subsidize public media, and outlaw the consolidation of media power in too few hands are achievable – they are vital for a robust democracy.

When it comes to media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations like CNN cannot be pawns in the newest merger game.