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On Thursday evening, amid swirling speculation concerning the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, pointing out the conflicting information and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.

Although the network is hardly a flawless news source, her words seemed accurate for a lot of people. It remains one of the broadcasters where you can find reality-based and generally trustworthy reporting – notably during crises such as the one developing close to a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Vulnerable Position Amid a High-Stakes Battle

However the news network, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a uncertain situation as two massive media empires battle over ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

Whatever the outcome, the destiny of CNN has turned into a major game of mergers and acquisitions, instead of as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.

“Here is one more case of the deep structural problems 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 – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a larger point.

“It gets presented as a corporate drama with powerful individuals as the central actors, but there is hardly any discussion of the public interest,” Pickard explained.

The Complicating Layer: Political Influence

This situation is made more complex by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his chief “fake news” antagonist.

Recall the cries of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration’s punitive withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in White House briefings.

Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will shield him from journalistic oversight. That is a factor in why he seems to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.

He has grounds to favor that suitor more. For one thing, it is run 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 installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.

A Future of More Uncertainty

Notably, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a standalone company. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a secure position. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for another sale. There is no finish line.

In the view of Timothy Wu, a lot of this is illegal, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should disallow both deals.

“Each proposed deal would be harmful to the country, and both should be contested by regulators,” Wu recently wrote.

The Fundamental Problem and a Way Ahead

No matter the outcome in this situation, the underlying crisis remains.

“What we have now is a very structure that undermines democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to learned helplessness,” Pickard emphasized. Policy decisions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this overly commercial monster, and revised policy decisions can tackle it.

Will that happen in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair will not confirm that the agency is independent? Reform is very unlikely now, but that should not imply it will not happen in the future.

Initiatives that support independent news organizations, aid local journalism, fund public media, and outlaw the consolidation of media power in a handful of hands are within reach – they are necessary for a functioning democracy.

In the world of media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations including CNN shouldn’t be pawns in the latest merger game.