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This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation concerning an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.

Even though CNN is certainly not a flawless news source, her message resonated for a lot of people. It is one of the outlets where one can locate fact-based and generally reliable reporting – notably during breaking news situations like the one developing close to a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Precarious Situation During a Corporate Battle

But the news network, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious state as two giant media conglomerates compete for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.

No matter the result, the destiny of CNN has been drawn into a high-risk game of business acquisition, rather than as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.

“Here is one more case of the deep structural problems with roots in many years of regulatory actions,” said Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Penn.

The debate about the future owner of Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a broader point.

“It is often framed as a financial tale with influential figures as the protagonists, but there is very little discussion of the public interest,” Pickard said.

The Complicating Element: Political Influence

The network's predicament is further muddied by Donald Trump’s opinions about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his primary “fake news” antagonist.

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

Trump now claims that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will shield him from criticism and scrutiny. That is a factor in why he seems to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.

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

Paramount, owner of CBS News, also recently placed the conservative Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that historic news network.

An Outcome of Further Uncertainty

It is important to note, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a separate entity. Such a move could be a relief to many at the network, but it’s far from a secure position. That structure could position CNN for another sale. There is no finish line.

According to Timothy Wu, a lot of this is illegal, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.

“Either merger would be detrimental to the country, and both should be contested by anti-trust authorities,” Wu stated.

The Bigger Challenge and a Way Ahead

Whatever happens regarding CNN, the larger issue persists.

“Our current system is a very structure that undermines democracy, but we ought not succumb to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard said. Government actions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this hyper-commercialized monster, and new policy decisions can fix it.

Will that happen in an era where the head of the FCC won’t even affirm that the agency is independent? Reform is highly improbable now, but that should not imply it will never happen.

Initiatives that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, finance public media, and prevent the accumulation of media power in too few hands are within reach – they are vital for a healthy democracy.

In the world of media ownership, size does not equal quality. And news organizations including CNN cannot be pieces in the newest merger game.