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This past Thursday night, as rumors swirled regarding the Brown University gunman, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, pointing out the conflicting information and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.

While the network is hardly a perfect news source, her words resonated for a lot of people. It is one of the broadcasters where there exists grounded and mostly reliable reporting – especially during crises like the one unfolding near a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Precarious State During a Business Tug-of-War

However the news network, now middle-aged, finds itself in a precarious state as two huge media corporations vie for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.

Whatever the outcome, the future of CNN has been drawn into a high-risk game of business acquisition, rather than as a question of what helps the news-consuming public.

“Here is one more case of the fundamental flaws with roots in many years of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a professor of media policy at the Penn.

The debate about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – could it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – fails to grasp a broader point.

“It is often framed as a business story with key players as the protagonists, but there is very little discussion of the common good,” Pickard said.

The Complicating Factor: The Former President

This situation is made more complex by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has consistently labeled as perhaps his main “fake news” adversary.

Recall the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary suspension of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes with Collins in press briefings.

Trump now claims that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will insulate him from negative coverage and examination. That is a factor in why he seems to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a unsolicited offer.

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

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

A Possibility of More Instability

Notably, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a independent unit. That would be a relief to many at the network, but it’s far from a guarantee of stability. That structure could set up CNN for yet another acquisition. It never ends.

According to Timothy Wu, much of this is against the law, anyway. The influential voice of big tech’s dominance recently argued that competition laws should prohibit both deals.

“Both acquisition attempts would be bad for the country, and both should be contested by regulators,” Wu argued.

The Fundamental Issue and a Way Ahead

Regardless of the resolution regarding CNN, the underlying crisis endures.

“The present media landscape is a profoundly anti-democratic system, but we shouldn’t give in to learned helplessness,” Pickard emphasized. Policy decisions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this profit-obsessed monster, and new policy decisions can address it.

Is this likely 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 doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future.

Measures that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, fund public media, and prohibit the concentration of media power in too few hands are achievable – they are essential for a robust democracy.

In the world of media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations including CNN cannot be pawns in the newest corporate chess match.