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This past Thursday night, as rumors swirled concerning a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.

While the network is hardly a flawless news source, her statement seemed accurate for a lot of people. It remains one of the organizations where you can find grounded and largely trustworthy reporting – notably during crises such as the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.

An Uncertain State Amid a High-Stakes Battle

Yet the news network, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a vulnerable position as two huge media conglomerates compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

No matter the result, the future of CNN has been drawn into a major game of corporate ownership, instead of as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.

“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with roots in many years of governmental choices,” stated Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.

The conjecture about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a larger point.

“It gets presented as a business story with key players as the central actors, but there is scant discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard said.

A Further Layer: The Former President

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

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

Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will shield him from journalistic oversight. That is one reason why he seems to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.

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

The company, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that storied news network.

A Possibility of Continued Uncertainty

Notably, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a separate entity. Such a move could be a relief to many at the network, but it’s hardly a safe harbor. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for another sale. It never ends.

According to Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is against the law, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should disallow both deals.

“Either merger would be harmful to the country, and both should be opposed by the government,” Wu stated.

The Bigger Issue and a Potential Solution

Regardless of the resolution regarding CNN, the underlying crisis endures.

“The present media landscape is a very system hostile to democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to learned helplessness,” Pickard noted. Regulatory choices – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can address it.

Will that happen in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair will not confirm that the agency is independent? Reform is a distant prospect now, but that is not to say it will never happen.

Policies that strengthen independent news organizations, aid local journalism, subsidize public media, and prohibit the concentration 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 including CNN shouldn’t be pieces in the most recent corporate chess match.