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Late Thursday, amid swirling speculation about the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, highlighting the uncertainty and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.

While the network is hardly a impeccable news source, her message seemed accurate to many. It stands as one of the outlets where you can find fact-based and mostly trustworthy reporting – notably during breaking news situations like the one taking place close to a New Hampshire storage facility.

An Uncertain Position Amid a Business Tug-of-War

However CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a vulnerable situation as two massive media empires vie for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.

Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has turned into a high-stakes game of business acquisition, instead of as a question of what serves the information-seeking public.

“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with origins in decades of policy decisions,” stated Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

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

“The narrative is crafted as a financial tale with powerful individuals as the main characters, but there is very little discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard explained.

The Additional Element: Donald Trump

The CNN scenario is complicated by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his primary “fake news” antagonist.

Recall the cries of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration's retaliatory withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in press briefings.

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

He has grounds to like 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 appointed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that storied news network.

A Future of More Instability

Notably, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a separate entity. This might be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a guarantee of stability. That setup could pave the way for CNN for a future sale. There is no finish line.

If you ask Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is illegal, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that competition laws should prohibit both deals.

“Either merger would be detrimental to the country, and both should be opposed by regulators,” Wu argued.

The Core Problem and a Way Ahead

No matter the outcome regarding CNN, the larger issue persists.

“The present media landscape is a highly structure that undermines democracy, but we must resist the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard said. Policy decisions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this overly commercial monster, and new policy decisions can fix 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 doesn’t mean it will be impossible forever.

Measures that strengthen independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, fund public media, and outlaw the accumulation of media power in a handful of hands are achievable – they are vital for a healthy democracy.

In the world of media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations such as CNN cannot be pawns in the latest merger game.