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This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation concerning a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, pointing out the conflicting information and pointing viewers to her network’s 9pm newscast.

Even though the network is hardly a impeccable news source, her words resonated for a lot of people. It stands as one of the outlets where you can find fact-based and generally reliable reporting – especially during breaking news situations such as 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 uncertain position as two huge media conglomerates battle over ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has been drawn into a high-risk game of corporate ownership, not as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.

“This represents another instance of the profound systemic issues with roots in many years of policy decisions,” noted Victor Pickard, author of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

The conjecture about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a more important point.

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

The Complicating Factor: Political Influence

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

Remember the cries of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration’s punitive revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in press briefings.

Trump now claims that CNN needs new ownership. Many see this as a desire for ownership that will shield him from journalistic oversight. That is one reason why he seems to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.

Trump has reason to favor that bidder more. For one thing, it is run 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 editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.

An Outcome of More Instability

Notably, if Netflix wins, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. This might be a relief to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a secure position. That setup could set up CNN for a future sale. It never ends.

According to 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.

“Either merger would be harmful to the country, and both should be contested by the government,” Wu recently wrote.

The Fundamental Issue and a Potential Solution

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

“Our current system is a very structure that undermines democracy, but we ought not succumb to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard noted. Government actions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this hyper-commercialized monster, and different policy decisions can tackle it.

Is this likely in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Change is very unlikely now, but that should not imply it will never happen.

Initiatives that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, finance public media, and outlaw the accumulation of media power in too few hands are not only possible – they are essential for a functioning democracy.

In the world of media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations such as CNN must not be pawns in the latest corporate chess match.