🔗 Share this article

On Thursday evening, while unconfirmed reports spread concerning an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, highlighting the uncertainty and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.

Although the network is hardly a flawless news source, her message rang true for a lot of people. It stands as one of the outlets where one can locate grounded and largely trustworthy reporting – especially during fast-moving events such as the one unfolding in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Vulnerable Situation Amid a High-Stakes Tug-of-War

But the news network, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a vulnerable situation as two giant media conglomerates compete for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.

Regardless of who wins, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a major game of business acquisition, instead of as a question of what helps the information-seeking public.

“Here is one more case of the profound systemic issues with origins 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 who will own Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a larger point.

“It gets presented as a financial tale with key players as the protagonists, but there is very little discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard explained.

The Additional Layer: The Former President

The CNN scenario is made more complex by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his chief “fake news” foe.

Recall the cries of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in press briefings.

Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will protect him from journalistic oversight. That is part of why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.

He has grounds 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, parent of CBS News, also recently placed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that storied news network.

An Outcome of Further Turmoil

Significantly, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a standalone company. This might be a relief to many at the network, but it’s hardly a secure position. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for another sale. The cycle continues.

If you ask Timothy Wu, much of this is illegal, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that anti-trust laws should block both deals.

“Both acquisition attempts would be bad for the country, and both should be contested by the government,” Wu recently wrote.

The Bigger Challenge and a Potential Solution

Regardless of the resolution regarding CNN, the bigger problem persists.

“Our current system is a very structure that undermines democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to learned helplessness,” Pickard said. Policy decisions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this hyper-commercialized 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 highly improbable now, but that is not to say it will not happen in the future.

Measures that bolster independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, subsidize public media, and prohibit the concentration of media power in a handful of hands are within reach – they are essential for a robust democracy.

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