🔗 Share this article

On Thursday evening, while unconfirmed reports spread regarding the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.

While the network is hardly a impeccable news source, her words rang true for a lot of people. It remains one of the broadcasters where you can find fact-based and largely dependable reporting – especially during fast-moving events like the one taking place close to a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Precarious Position Amid a High-Stakes Tug-of-War

However CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a uncertain situation as two giant media conglomerates vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

Regardless of who wins, the fate of CNN has become part of a high-risk game of mergers and acquisitions, instead of as a question of what helps the news-consuming public.

“Here is one more case of the profound systemic issues with roots in decades of governmental choices,” noted Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.

The conjecture about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a larger point.

“It gets presented as a business story with key players as the central actors, but there is very little discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard added.

The Additional Layer: Donald Trump

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

Recall the chants of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his administration’s punitive withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring 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 criticism and scrutiny. That is one reason why he appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.

He has grounds to favor that suitor 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, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that venerable news network.

A Future of Further Instability

Notably, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a standalone company. This might be a relief to many at the network, but it’s far from a guarantee of stability. That setup could set up CNN for another sale. There is no finish line.

According to Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance recently argued that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.

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

The Bigger Issue and a Potential Solution

No matter the outcome with this particular battle, the larger issue endures.

“Our current system is a very structure that undermines democracy, but we must resist learned helplessness,” Pickard noted. Regulatory choices – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can address it.

Will that happen in an era where the top communications regulator refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Change is a distant prospect now, but that is not to say it will not happen in the future.

Measures that strengthen independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the concentration of media power in very few hands are not only possible – they are necessary for a healthy democracy.

In the world of media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations such as CNN shouldn’t be pieces in the most recent acquisition battle.