On Thursday evening, as rumors about the Brown University gunman swirled, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, noting the confusion and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.
CNN is certainly not a flawless news source, but her words rang true to me. The network is one of the outlets where you can find reality-based and largely dependable reporting – especially in breaking news situations like the one that was developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.
But CNN, now 45 years old, is in a precarious situation as two huge media conglomerates vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of corporate ownership, not as a question of what benefits the information-seeking public.
America’s media system isn’t set up for that lofty goal. It’s set up for corporate profitability, for shareholder gain, for ever-increasing size and ever-decreasing competition.
“This is yet another example of the deep structural problems with roots in decades of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, author of Democracy Without Journalism? and a University of Pennsylvania media policy professor.
The speculation about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a larger point.