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This past Thursday night, while unconfirmed reports spread about the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.

Although the network is hardly a flawless news source, her message seemed accurate for a lot of people. It stands as one of the outlets where there exists grounded and mostly trustworthy reporting – particularly during fast-moving events such as the one developing in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.

An Uncertain Situation Amid a High-Stakes Tug-of-War

However CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a uncertain situation as two huge media empires vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

Whatever the outcome, the future of CNN has become part of a major game of mergers and acquisitions, not as a question of what serves the information-seeking public.

“Here is one more case of the fundamental flaws with origins in decades of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a academic specializing in media policy at the University of Pennsylvania.

The speculation about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a broader point.

“The narrative is crafted as a financial tale with influential figures as the central actors, but there is hardly any discussion of the common good,” Pickard explained.

The Additional Factor: The Former President

The network's predicament is complicated by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his main “fake news” adversary.

Recall the cries of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in official meetings.

Trump now asserts that CNN needs new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will shield him from negative coverage and examination. That is a factor in why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.

There is a basis to prefer 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.

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

A Future of Further Turmoil

Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a standalone company. This might be a relief to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a guarantee of stability. That arrangement could position CNN for a future sale. There is no finish line.

In the view of Timothy Wu, a lot of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance stated that anti-trust laws should prohibit both deals.

“Both acquisition attempts would be harmful to the country, and both should be challenged by regulators,” Wu stated.

The Bigger Challenge and a Path Forward

Whatever happens regarding CNN, the underlying crisis endures.

“Our current system is a highly anti-democratic system, but we shouldn’t give in to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard noted. Regulatory choices – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and different policy decisions can tackle it.

Will that happen in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Change is highly improbable now, but that should not imply it will not happen in the future.

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

Regarding media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations including CNN cannot be pieces in the latest acquisition battle.