This Power Struggle For CNN Shows How Broken American Journalism Truly Is.

This past Thursday night, as rumors swirled regarding an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.

Although the network is hardly a perfect news source, her words rang true for a lot of people. It stands as one of the outlets where you can find reality-based and largely reliable reporting – especially during breaking news situations such as the one unfolding close to a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Vulnerable Situation During a Business Tug-of-War

But CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a vulnerable state as two massive media empires vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has turned into a major game of mergers and acquisitions, rather than as a question of what helps the news-consuming public.

“This represents another instance of the profound systemic issues with origins in decades of policy decisions,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.

The conjecture about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a larger point.

“The narrative is crafted as a corporate drama with key players as the central actors, but there is scant discussion of the public interest,” Pickard explained.

A Further Layer: The Former President

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

Remember the chants of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration's retaliatory revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in White House 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 come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.

He has grounds to favor that suitor more. For one thing, it is run by David Ellison, son of the ally of Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.

The company, parent of CBS News, also recently appointed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.

An Outcome of Further Uncertainty

Notably, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a independent unit. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a safe harbor. That setup could pave the way for CNN for a future sale. It never ends.

In the view of Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is against the law, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance stated that anti-trust laws should prohibit both deals.

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

The Fundamental Challenge and a Path Forward

Whatever happens with this particular battle, the underlying crisis remains.

“What we have now is a profoundly structure that undermines democracy, but we ought not succumb to learned helplessness,” Pickard said. Policy decisions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this overly commercial monster, and revised policy decisions can address it.

Can reform occur in an era where the head of the FCC will not confirm that the agency is independent? Reform is very unlikely now, but that is not to say it will not happen in the future.

Measures that support independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the consolidation of media power in very few hands are not only possible – they are essential for a functioning democracy.

When it comes to media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations such as CNN cannot be pawns in the newest merger game.