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On Thursday evening, as rumors swirled regarding a shooting at Brown University, the network's Kaitlan Collins took to social media, pointing out the conflicting information and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.

While the network is hardly a perfect news source, her words resonated for a lot of people. It stands as one of the organizations where you can find grounded and generally dependable reporting – especially during fast-moving events like the one unfolding in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Vulnerable State During a High-Stakes Struggle

Yet the news network, now 45 years old, finds itself in a vulnerable situation as two massive media empires battle over ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.

No matter the result, the fate of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, rather than as a question of what serves the information-seeking public.

“This is yet another example of the fundamental flaws with origins in decades of governmental choices,” said Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Pennsylvania University.

The conjecture about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a broader point.

“It gets presented as a corporate drama with powerful individuals as the protagonists, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard explained.

A Further Factor: Donald Trump

This situation is complicated by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his primary “fake news” adversary.

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

Trump now says that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from journalistic oversight. That is a factor in why he seems to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.

There is a basis to prefer 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 installed the conservative Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that storied news network.

A Possibility of More Instability

Notably, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a independent unit. Such a move could be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a guarantee of stability. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for another sale. There is no finish line.

If you ask Timothy Wu, a lot of this is against the law, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance recently argued that anti-trust laws should prohibit both deals.

“Either merger would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu stated.

The Bigger Challenge and a Potential Solution

Whatever happens in this situation, the underlying crisis endures.

“What we have now is a highly system hostile to democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to learned helplessness,” Pickard noted. Government actions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and different policy decisions can tackle it.

Will that happen in an era where the top communications regulator will not confirm that the agency is independent? Change is very unlikely now, but that is not to say it will not happen in the future.

Measures that support independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, subsidize public media, and prohibit the concentration of media power in too few hands are within reach – they are necessary for a functioning democracy.

In the world of media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations such as CNN must not be pawns in the most recent corporate chess match.