🔗 Share this article

Late Thursday, as rumors swirled concerning an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.

Although CNN is certainly not a perfect news source, her words seemed accurate for a lot of people. It is one of the broadcasters where one can locate fact-based and mostly reliable reporting – notably during breaking news situations such as the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.

An Uncertain Position Amid a Business Tug-of-War

Yet the news network, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious state as two massive media conglomerates battle over ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.

Regardless of who wins, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, instead of as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.

“Here is one more case of the deep structural problems with origins in decades of regulatory actions,” stated Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Pennsylvania University.

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

“It is often framed as a corporate drama with powerful individuals as the central actors, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard said.

The Additional Element: Donald Trump

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

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

Trump now claims that CNN needs new ownership. This can be interpreted 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 aggressive takeover attempt.

He has grounds to like that company more. For one thing, it is controlled 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, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that historic news network.

A Future of More Turmoil

It is important to note, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. That would be a relief to many at the network, but it’s hardly a secure position. That arrangement could position CNN for a future sale. The cycle continues.

If you ask Timothy Wu, a lot of this is against the law, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance stated that competition laws should prohibit both deals.

“Each proposed deal would be bad for the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu recently wrote.

The Core Issue and a Potential Solution

Regardless of the resolution in this situation, the bigger problem remains.

“The present media landscape is a highly structure that undermines democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to learned helplessness,” Pickard emphasized. Government actions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can tackle it.

Is this likely in an era where the top communications regulator refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Change is a distant prospect now, but that doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.

Policies that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, subsidize public media, and outlaw the concentration of media power in very few hands are not only possible – they are necessary for a functioning democracy.

In the world of media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations including CNN must not be tools in the most recent merger game.