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Late Thursday, 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 network’s 9pm newscast.

Even though the network is hardly a impeccable news source, her message resonated to many. It remains one of the organizations where you can find grounded and mostly reliable reporting – notably during breaking news situations like the one taking place close to a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Precarious Situation During a High-Stakes Struggle

But CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a uncertain situation as two huge media conglomerates vie for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.

Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a major game of corporate ownership, not as a question of what serves the information-seeking public.

“Here is one more case of the deep structural problems with roots in decades of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a academic specializing in media policy at the University of Pennsylvania.

The conjecture about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a larger point.

“It is often framed as a business story with powerful individuals as the main characters, but there is hardly any discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard said.

The Complicating Layer: Political Influence

The network's predicament is made more complex by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his chief “fake news” foe.

Think back to the chants of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his team's disciplinary suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in official meetings.

Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. Many see this as a desire for ownership that will insulate him from negative coverage and examination. That is one reason why he seems to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.

There is a basis to favor that bidder 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, owner of CBS News, also recently installed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that venerable news network.

A Possibility of More Uncertainty

Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a separate entity. This might be a relief to many at the network, but it’s far from a safe harbor. That arrangement could set up CNN for another sale. It never ends.

In the view of Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is illegal, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance recently argued that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.

“Each proposed deal would be detrimental to the country, and both should be opposed by the government,” Wu stated.

The Core Issue and a Way Ahead

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

“Our current system is a profoundly system hostile to democracy, but we ought not succumb to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard said. Policy decisions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this hyper-commercialized monster, and revised policy decisions can fix it.

Is this likely in an era where the head of the FCC will not confirm that the agency is independent? Reform is very unlikely now, but that should not imply it will never happen.

Measures that bolster independent news organizations, aid local journalism, subsidize public media, and prohibit the concentration of media power in too few hands are not only possible – they are vital for a healthy democracy.

In the world of media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations like CNN shouldn’t be tools in the newest merger game.