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Late Thursday, as rumors swirled concerning the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, highlighting the uncertainty and pointing viewers to her channel's 9pm newscast.

Although the network is hardly a impeccable news source, her message resonated for a lot of people. It stands as one of the broadcasters where you can find fact-based and mostly trustworthy reporting – particularly during fast-moving events like the one taking place near a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Precarious Position During a Corporate Tug-of-War

However CNN, now middle-aged, finds itself in a precarious situation as two huge media corporations battle over ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.

Whatever the outcome, the destiny of CNN has been drawn into a high-risk game of mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what serves the information-seeking public.

“This is yet another example of the profound systemic issues with roots in decades of regulatory actions,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a academic specializing in media policy 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 larger point.

“It is often framed as a financial tale with powerful individuals as the main characters, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard said.

A Further Element: The Former President

The network's predicament is made more complex by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his chief “fake news” antagonist.

Think back to the chants of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration’s punitive withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in press briefings.

Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will insulate him from journalistic oversight. That is one reason why he appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.

He has grounds to favor that company more. For one thing, it is led by David Ellison, son of the Trump-friendly 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 editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.

A Future of Further Turmoil

Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a standalone company. Such a move could be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a guarantee of stability. That setup could position CNN for yet another acquisition. The cycle continues.

In the view of Timothy Wu, a lot of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance recently argued that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.

“Both acquisition attempts would be harmful to the country, and both should be challenged by anti-trust authorities,” Wu argued.

The Fundamental Challenge and a Potential Solution

Whatever happens in this situation, the bigger problem endures.

“Our current system is a profoundly structure that undermines democracy, but we must resist learned helplessness,” Pickard emphasized. Government actions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can address it.

Can reform occur in an era where the head of the FCC refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Change is a distant prospect now, but that is not to say it will be impossible forever.

Measures that support independent news organizations, aid local journalism, subsidize public media, and outlaw the consolidation of media power in a handful of hands are within reach – they are essential for a robust democracy.

In the world of media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations such as CNN cannot be pieces in the latest acquisition battle.