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This past Thursday night, amid swirling speculation about the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, highlighting the uncertainty and guiding the public to her network’s 9pm newscast.

Although CNN is certainly not a perfect news source, her words resonated for a lot of people. It remains one of the organizations where there exists reality-based and mostly trustworthy reporting – especially during crises such as the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.

An Uncertain State During a High-Stakes Battle

Yet CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a precarious state as two massive media empires vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

Whatever the outcome, the future of CNN has turned into a major game of mergers and acquisitions, instead of as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.

“This represents another instance of the profound systemic issues with roots in decades of regulatory actions,” said Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the Pennsylvania University.

The speculation about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – is it going to be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a more important point.

“It gets presented as a financial tale with powerful individuals as the protagonists, but there is hardly any discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard added.

The Complicating Layer: Political Influence

This situation is made more complex by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his primary “fake news” antagonist.

Think back to the chants of “CNN sucks!” at his rallies, his team's disciplinary withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his sparring with Collins in White House briefings.

Trump now claims that the network requires new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will insulate him from journalistic oversight. That is a factor in why he appears to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.

Trump has reason to favor that suitor 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, owner of CBS News, also recently installed the conservative Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that historic news network.

An Outcome of Further Turmoil

Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. Such a move could be a relief to many at the network, but it’s hardly a guarantee of stability. That structure could set up CNN for yet another acquisition. It never ends.

If you ask Timothy Wu, much of this is illegal, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance stated that competition laws should block both deals.

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

The Bigger Problem and a Way Ahead

No matter the outcome in this situation, the underlying crisis endures.

“The present media landscape is a profoundly anti-democratic system, but we shouldn’t give in to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard said. Policy decisions – from the 1930s and 1940s – helped to build this profit-obsessed monster, and revised policy decisions can fix it.

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

Measures that bolster independent news organizations, aid local journalism, subsidize public media, and prohibit the accumulation of media power in very few hands are not only possible – they are vital for a functioning democracy.

When it comes to media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations including CNN shouldn’t be pawns in the newest acquisition battle.