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Late Thursday, while unconfirmed reports spread regarding a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and guiding the public to her network’s 9pm newscast.

Even though the network is hardly a impeccable news source, her words rang true to many. It stands as one of the organizations where one can locate reality-based and mostly dependable reporting – especially during crises like the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Precarious Position During a Corporate Struggle

Yet CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious position as two huge media conglomerates compete for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of corporate ownership, rather than as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.

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

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

“It gets presented as a business story with influential figures as the central actors, but there is very little discussion of the public interest,” Pickard said.

A Further Element: The Former President

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

Remember the cries of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his administration's retaliatory withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in press briefings.

Trump now claims that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from negative coverage and examination. That is part of why he seems to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.

There is a basis to favor that suitor more. For one thing, it is controlled by David Ellison, son of the Trump-friendly Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.

Paramount, parent of CBS News, also recently appointed the conservative Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the lead editor of that historic news network.

An Outcome of Continued Uncertainty

Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a independent unit. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a guarantee of stability. That structure could set up CNN for another sale. It never ends.

If you ask Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is against the law, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance stated that competition laws should disallow both deals.

“Each proposed deal would be bad for the country, and both should be challenged by the government,” Wu recently wrote.

The Fundamental Issue and a Path Forward

Regardless of the resolution with this particular battle, the bigger problem persists.

“Our current system is a profoundly anti-democratic system, but we must resist a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard noted. Government actions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can address it.

Will that happen in an era where the top communications regulator won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Change is highly improbable now, but that should not imply it will be impossible forever.

Measures that bolster independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the consolidation of media power in a handful of hands are not only possible – they are vital for a functioning democracy.

In the world of media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations like CNN must not be pieces in the latest corporate chess match.