🔗 Share this article

On Thursday evening, amid swirling speculation concerning a shooting at Brown University, the network's Kaitlan Collins took to social media, noting the confusion and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.

While CNN is certainly not a flawless news source, her words resonated for a lot of people. It stands as one of the outlets where there exists grounded and largely trustworthy reporting – notably during crises like the one taking place near a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Vulnerable Position During a Corporate Tug-of-War

Yet CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious state as two giant media conglomerates battle over ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a high-risk game of business acquisition, instead of as a question of what benefits the information-seeking public.

“This represents another instance of the fundamental flaws with roots in decades of governmental choices,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Pennsylvania University.

The speculation about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a broader point.

“It is often framed as a business story with influential figures as the main characters, but there is very little discussion of the common good,” Pickard said.

A Further Factor: The Former President

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

Remember the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration's retaliatory revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in White House briefings.

Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will insulate him from criticism and scrutiny. That is a factor in why he appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.

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

Paramount, parent of CBS News, also recently placed the conservative Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that historic news network.

A Future of More Turmoil

Significantly, if Netflix is successful, 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 far from a guarantee of stability. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for another sale. It never ends.

In the view of Timothy Wu, a lot of this is against the law, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance stated that competition laws should disallow both deals.

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

The Bigger Challenge and a Path Forward

No matter the outcome regarding CNN, the underlying crisis endures.

“Our current system is a highly structure that undermines democracy, but we ought not succumb to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard emphasized. Government actions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can tackle it.

Will that happen in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair will not confirm that the agency is independent? Reform is a distant prospect now, but that should not imply it will be impossible forever.

Measures 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 essential for a robust democracy.

When it comes to media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations including CNN must not be pieces in the newest merger game.