By force of habit that started with the first Gulf War in 1991, many longtime TV viewers turn to CNN whenever the U.S. engages in war. It is happening again now with coverage of war in Iran.

CNN has the worldwide resources and experience to provide credi

ble*, continuous live coverage of wars (though neither CNN nor any other Western network has a reporter in Iran).

One unavoidable question is what might happen to CNN’s war and non-war journalism when it presumably comes under the control of Paramount and the Trump-friendly Ellison family. Netflix pulled out of the bidding for CNN owner Warner Bros. Discovery on Friday. That triggered mass alarm within CNN’s newsroom, justified in part by what has happened to CBS News under Paramount.

But CNN has provoked criticisms, mostly from political progressives, about softening its journalism for the past four years. For silencing Donald Trump critics like anchors Jim Acosta and John Harwood. For staging a televised town hall propaganda platform for Trump. For skewing coverage of the Israel-Gaza war in favor of Israel. For hiring the reckless MAGA commentator Scott Jennings.

The current and previous top editors at CNN, trying to reverse a trend of viewership decline, publicly framed their mission as eliminating the network’s longstanding liberal bias and making CNN more appealing to Republicans (fat chance). Trying to eradicate political bias of any kind in news coverage (as opposed to commentary) is worthy. But that’s completely different than stifling the fact-based challenges that journalists pose to people in power, or the well-grounded criticisms that good-faith opinion givers level at those powerful people.

As well, some matters are purely journalistic, not political. Jennings tweeted Saturday that administration sources told him Iran had planned pre-emptive attacks against military and civilian targets in the region, so Trump’s decision to attack prevented “mass” U.S. casualties. Jennings presented the claim as news reporting, not opinion, and as real reporters at his own network revealed hours later, it was big-time wrong. But he has not been fired.

Maybe Paramount will spare CNN’s editorial independence, as it so far has (sort of) with CBS’ 60 Minutes. But if the priority becomes more political placation of Trump and MAGA, then that’ll be yet another legacy news outlet to cross off the list. Even in wartime.

* Although … CNN’s chief international correspondent did get duped once.

Tom Arenberg is an instructor of news media at the University of Alabama. He worked for The Birmingham News and the Alabama Media Group for 30 years. He published this commentary originally as a post on his blog, The Arenblog.

About News is a BirminghamWatch feature that publishes commentary by those who teach the craft and think about the values and performance of today’s journalism. BirminghamWatch also publishes About News articles on Facebook and invites readers to join the conversation there.