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This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation about a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, noting the confusion and guiding the public to her network’s 9pm newscast.

While the network is hardly a flawless news source, her words rang true for a lot of people. It remains one of the outlets where one can locate fact-based and mostly trustworthy reporting – notably during fast-moving events such as the one taking place close to a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Precarious Position Amid a Corporate Battle

Yet CNN, now middle-aged, finds itself in a precarious position as two giant media corporations vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

Regardless of who wins, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what benefits the information-seeking public.

“Here is one more case of the deep structural problems with roots in many years of regulatory actions,” noted Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Pennsylvania University.

The speculation about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a broader point.

“It gets presented as a financial tale with key players as the protagonists, but there is very little discussion of the common good,” Pickard added.

The Additional Factor: The Former President

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

Recall the cries of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in official meetings.

Trump now says that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he seems to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.

There is a basis to prefer that suitor 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, parent of CBS News, also recently appointed the conservative Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that historic news network.

A Possibility of Continued Turmoil

Notably, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a independent unit. This might be a relief to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a safe harbor. That structure could set up CNN for a future sale. The cycle continues.

According to Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should block both deals.

“Each proposed deal would be bad for the country, and both should be opposed by the government,” Wu recently wrote.

The Fundamental Problem and a Potential Solution

Whatever happens in this situation, the underlying crisis remains.

“The present media landscape is a highly structure that undermines democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard noted. Government actions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can address it.

Can reform occur in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Change is highly improbable now, but that doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.

Measures that bolster independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, subsidize public media, and outlaw the accumulation of media power in very few hands are achievable – they are vital for a robust democracy.

When it comes to media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations like CNN cannot be pieces in the most recent merger game.