The Power Struggle Over the Cable News Network Shows How Broken American Media Truly Is.

This past Thursday night, while unconfirmed reports spread concerning the Brown University gunman, the network's Kaitlan Collins used social media, noting the confusion and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.

While the network is hardly a perfect news source, her statement resonated to many. It stands as one of the outlets where one can locate fact-based and generally dependable reporting – particularly during breaking news situations such as the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.

An Uncertain Position 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 massive media corporations compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

No matter the result, the fate of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of business acquisition, not as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.

“Here is one more case of the profound systemic issues with origins in many years of regulatory actions,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.

The speculation about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a broader point.

“The narrative is crafted as a financial tale with key players as the main characters, but there is very little discussion of the public interest,” Pickard added.

The Complicating Layer: Donald Trump

The network's predicament is complicated by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his main “fake news” antagonist.

Recall the chants of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration’s punitive suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in official meetings.

Trump now claims that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will insulate him from journalistic oversight. That is one reason why he appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.

He has grounds to like 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, owner of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that historic news network.

An Outcome of More Uncertainty

Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a independent unit. That would 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. It never ends.

According to Timothy Wu, a lot of this is against the law, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that anti-trust laws should prohibit both deals.

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

The Fundamental Issue and a Potential Solution

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

“What we have now is a profoundly structure that undermines democracy, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Policy decisions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this hyper-commercialized monster, and different policy decisions can address it.

Will that happen in an era where the head of the FCC refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Change is a distant prospect now, but that is not to say it will be impossible forever.

Measures that strengthen independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, finance public media, and prevent the concentration of media power in too few hands are not only possible – they are vital for a robust democracy.

Regarding media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations such as CNN cannot be pawns in the most recent corporate chess match.