🔗 Share this article

Late Thursday, amid swirling speculation about an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, noting the confusion and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.

Even though the network is hardly a flawless news source, her words rang true to many. It stands as one of the broadcasters where you can find grounded and largely reliable reporting – particularly during breaking news situations such as the one taking place near a New Hampshire storage facility.

An Uncertain Situation During a Business Tug-of-War

But CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a precarious state as two massive media empires battle over 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 business acquisition, rather than as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.

“This represents another instance of the fundamental flaws with roots in many years of policy decisions,” noted 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 – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a more important point.

“It is often framed as a corporate drama with influential figures as the central actors, but there is hardly any discussion of the public interest,” Pickard explained.

The Additional Layer: The Former President

The network's predicament is further muddied by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his main “fake news” foe.

Think back to the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his administration's retaliatory suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in press briefings.

Trump now claims 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 appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.

Trump has reason to like that suitor more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the ally of Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.

Paramount, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that venerable news network.

A Future of More 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 setup could set up CNN for yet another acquisition. It never ends.

If you ask Timothy Wu, much of this is illegal, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance stated that competition laws should block both deals.

“Each proposed deal would be harmful to the country, and both should be contested by the government,” Wu recently wrote.

The Core Issue and a Potential Solution

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

“What we have now is a profoundly system hostile to democracy, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard emphasized. Government actions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this hyper-commercialized monster, and different policy decisions can fix it.

Can reform occur in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Overhaul is a distant prospect now, but that doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.

Measures that strengthen independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, finance public media, and prevent the accumulation of media power in too few hands are not only possible – they are necessary for a functioning democracy.

Regarding media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations like CNN must not be pieces in the latest merger game.