{"id":644217,"date":"2025-12-20T12:33:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T12:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/644217\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T12:33:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T12:33:12","slug":"the-tug-of-war-over-cnn-shows-how-dysfunctional-us-media-has-become-margaret-sullivan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/644217\/","title":{"rendered":"The tug-of-war over CNN shows how dysfunctional US media has become | Margaret Sullivan"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Thursday evening, as rumors about the Brown University gunman<\/a> swirled, CNN\u2019s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, noting the confusion and directing people to her network\u2019s 9pm newscast.<\/p>\n

CNN<\/a> 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 \u2013 especially in breaking news situations like the one that was developing<\/a> near a New Hampshire storage facility.<\/p>\n

But CNN<\/a>, now 45 years old, is in a precarious situation as two huge media conglomerates vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

America\u2019s media system isn\u2019t set up for that lofty goal. It\u2019s set up for corporate profitability, for shareholder gain, for ever-increasing size and ever-decreasing competition.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is yet another example of the deep structural problems with roots in decades of policy decisions,\u201d said Victor Pickard, author of Democracy Without Journalism?<\/a> and a University of Pennsylvania media policy professor.<\/p>\n

The speculation about who will own Warner Bros Discovery \u2013 will it be Netflix<\/a> or Paramount Skydance<\/a>? \u2013 misses a larger point.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gets presented as a business story with powerful individuals as the protagonists, but there is very little discussion of the public interest,\u201d Pickard said. He, along with two other scholars, is the author of a sweeping new Roosevelt Institute report<\/a> about media consolidation and its dire effects, addressing how we got here and pointing a better way forward.<\/p>\n

The CNN scenario is complicated by Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s views about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his primary \u201cfake news\u201d antagonist<\/a>. Recall the<\/a> chants<\/a> of \u201cCNN sucks!\u201d at the president\u2019s rallies, or his administration\u2019s punitive withdrawal<\/a> of Jim Acosta\u2019s press credentials, or his sparring<\/a> with Collins in press briefings.<\/p>\n

Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership<\/a>. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he seems to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid<\/a> intended to overcome an earlier accepted deal by Netflix. The Warner Brothers Discovery board rejected<\/a> the Paramount bid this week, but there are still plenty of regulatory battles ahead, and the Trump administration may well involve itself.<\/p>\n

Trump has reason to like that suitor more. For one thing, it is controlled by David Ellison, son of the Trump-friendly Larry Ellison<\/a>, one of the world\u2019s richest people.<\/p>\n

Paramount, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss<\/a>, known for her \u201canti-woke\u201d beliefs, as the top editor of that storied news network. Trump has praised Weiss publicly,<\/a> and as an example of her news judgment, she recently conducted<\/a> a \u201ctown hall\u201d interview with Erika Kirk, the widow of the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk.<\/p>\n

Notably, if Netflix<\/a> prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a separate entity, and they would not be part of the Warner Bros Discovery acquisition. That would be a relief to many at the network, but it\u2019s hardly a safe harbor. That arrangement could set up CNN and the others for another sale. It never ends.<\/p>\n

If you ask Timothy Wu, much of this is illegal, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech\u2019s dominance of major media platforms wrote recently that anti-trust laws should prohibit both deals.<\/p>\n

\u201cEither merger would be bad for the country, and both should be challenged by anti-trust authorities,\u201d Wu recently wrote<\/a> in the New York Times.<\/p>\n

Whatever happens in this situation, the bigger problem remains. And Pickard, for one, is not ready to throw up his hands and say nothing can be done to reverse what has happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we have now is a very anti-democratic system, but we shouldn\u2019t give in to learned helplessness,\u201d he said. Policy decisions \u2013 dating back to the 1930s and 1940s in the heyday of radio \u2013 helped to create this hyper-commercialized monster, and new policy decisions can address it.<\/p>\n

Will that happen in the Trump era in which Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr won\u2019t even affirm<\/a> that the agency is independent? Reform is very unlikely now, but that doesn\u2019t mean it will never happen \u2013 or that it should be regarded as impossible.<\/p>\n

Policies that strengthen independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, fund public media, and prohibit the concentration of media power in too few hands are not only possible \u2013 they are necessary for a functioning democracy.<\/p>\n

In the world of media ownership, bigger isn\u2019t better. And news organizations including CNN shouldn\u2019t be pawns in the latest merger game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Thursday evening, as rumors about the Brown University gunman swirled, CNN\u2019s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-644217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-united-states","9":"tag-us","10":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115751918178007086","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}