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Late Thursday, while unconfirmed reports spread about a shooting at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, noting the confusion and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.

While the network is hardly a perfect news source, her message seemed accurate for a lot of people. It is one of the organizations where you can find reality-based and generally trustworthy reporting – particularly during breaking news situations like the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Vulnerable State During a Business Tug-of-War

But the news network, now 45 years old, finds itself in a vulnerable state as two massive media corporations battle over ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.

No matter the result, the future of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of corporate ownership, not as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.

“This represents another instance of the deep structural problems with origins in decades of regulatory actions,” noted Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

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

“It gets presented as a business story with powerful individuals as the central actors, but there is hardly any discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard added.

A Further Element: The Former President

The network's predicament is complicated by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his primary “fake news” adversary.

Think back to the cries of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his administration's retaliatory suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in White House briefings.

Trump now says that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from journalistic oversight. That is one reason why he appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.

He has grounds to prefer that bidder more. For one thing, it is run by David Ellison, son of the Trump-friendly Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.

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

A Possibility of Continued Instability

Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be separated into a standalone company. Such a move could be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s far from a safe harbor. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for yet another acquisition. There is no finish line.

If you ask Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance recently argued that competition laws should disallow both deals.

“Each proposed deal would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu argued.

The Fundamental Issue and a Path Forward

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

“What we have now is a very system hostile to democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to learned helplessness,” Pickard noted. Regulatory choices – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can address it.

Can reform occur in an era where the Federal Communications Commission chair will not confirm that the agency is independent? Reform is a distant prospect now, but that should not imply it will never happen.

Initiatives that support independent news organizations, aid local journalism, fund public media, and prevent the consolidation of media power in a handful of hands are within reach – they are necessary for a robust democracy.

In the world of media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations including CNN must not be pawns in the newest acquisition battle.