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This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation concerning an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, pointing out the conflicting information and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.

While the network is hardly a impeccable news source, her words resonated for a lot of people. It remains one of the outlets where you can find reality-based and mostly trustworthy reporting – especially during crises like the one unfolding in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Vulnerable Situation Amid a Corporate Battle

But the news network, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a precarious state as two huge media corporations vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

Regardless of who wins, the future of CNN has turned into a major game of mergers and acquisitions, rather than as a question of what helps the information-seeking public.

“This is yet another example of the deep structural problems with origins in decades of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Pennsylvania University.

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

“The narrative is crafted as a business story with key players as the main characters, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard said.

The Additional Layer: The Former President

The CNN scenario is complicated by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his primary “fake news” adversary.

Remember the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his administration’s punitive revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in White House briefings.

Trump now says that CNN needs new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will protect him from criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.

There is a basis to like that company more. For one thing, it is controlled 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, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that venerable news network.

A Future of More Instability

Significantly, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a standalone company. Such a move could be a relief to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a safe harbor. That setup could set up CNN for yet another acquisition. There is no finish line.

If you ask Timothy Wu, much of this is against the law, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance stated that competition laws should block both deals.

“Both acquisition attempts would be bad for the country, and both should be opposed by the government,” Wu stated.

The Core Challenge and a Path Forward

No matter the outcome regarding CNN, the underlying crisis endures.

“What we have now is a profoundly system hostile to democracy, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Regulatory choices – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this overly commercial monster, and revised policy decisions can tackle it.

Can reform occur in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Overhaul is highly improbable now, but that doesn’t mean it will never happen.

Policies that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, fund public media, and prohibit the consolidation of media power in a handful of hands are not only possible – they are necessary for a robust democracy.

When it comes to media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations including CNN must not be pieces in the most recent corporate chess match.