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This past Thursday night, as rumors swirled about a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, noting the confusion and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.

While the network is hardly a perfect news source, her message seemed accurate for a lot of people. It is one of the outlets where there exists reality-based and mostly reliable reporting – particularly during crises such as the one taking place near a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Precarious Position During a Corporate Struggle

However the news network, now 45 years old, finds itself in a vulnerable position as two massive media conglomerates compete for ownership of its corporate owner, 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 serves the news-consuming public.

“This is yet another example of the profound systemic issues with roots in decades of policy decisions,” stated Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

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

“It is often framed as a business story with key players as the main characters, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard added.

The Complicating Element: Political Influence

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

Think back to the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration's retaliatory withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in official meetings.

Trump now claims that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from journalistic oversight. That is a factor in why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.

He has grounds to prefer that bidder more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the pro-Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.

The company, owner of CBS News, also recently placed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that historic news network.

A Future of More Instability

Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a separate entity. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a secure position. That structure could set up CNN for a future sale. It never ends.

According to Timothy Wu, a lot of this is against the law, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance stated that anti-trust laws should prohibit both deals.

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

The Core Issue and a Potential Solution

No matter the outcome in this situation, the larger issue persists.

“The present media landscape is a very structure that undermines democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard emphasized. Regulatory choices – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this overly commercial monster, and revised policy decisions can address it.

Can reform occur in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Reform is very unlikely now, but that is not to say it will be impossible forever.

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

In the world of media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations such as CNN shouldn’t be pawns in the newest corporate chess match.