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Late Thursday, while unconfirmed reports spread about the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, noting the confusion and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.

While CNN is certainly not a perfect news source, her message resonated to many. It stands as one of the outlets where one can locate fact-based and mostly reliable reporting – especially during crises like the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Precarious Position Amid a Corporate Struggle

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

Whatever the outcome, the destiny of CNN has become part of a major game of mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.

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

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

“It gets presented as a financial tale with influential figures as the central actors, but there is scant discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard said.

The Complicating Element: Political Influence

The network's predicament is complicated by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his chief “fake news” antagonist.

Think back to the cries of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s 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 the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will insulate him from negative coverage and examination. That is part of why he appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.

He has grounds to like that company more. For one thing, it is run by David Ellison, son of the ally of Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.

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

A Future of Continued Instability

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

If you ask Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is against the law, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance recently argued that anti-trust laws should block both deals.

“Each proposed deal would be bad for the country, and both should be contested by the government,” Wu argued.

The Core Problem and a Way Ahead

Whatever happens with this particular battle, the bigger problem remains.

“Our current system is a very anti-democratic system, but we shouldn’t give in to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard said. Policy decisions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can fix it.

Can reform occur in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Change is very unlikely now, but that should not imply it will never happen.

Policies that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, subsidize public media, and prevent the concentration of media power in too few hands are achievable – they are essential for a healthy democracy.

Regarding media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations like CNN cannot be tools in the latest merger game.