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This past Thursday night, as rumors swirled regarding an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.

While the network is hardly a perfect news source, her message seemed accurate for numerous observers. It is one of the outlets where you can find fact-based and generally dependable reporting – especially during breaking news situations like the one developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Precarious Situation During a High-Stakes Struggle

Yet the news network, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a vulnerable state as two giant media empires vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

Regardless of who wins, the destiny of CNN has turned into a high-risk game of mergers and acquisitions, instead of as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.

“Here is one more case of the deep structural problems with roots in decades of policy decisions,” noted Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a academic specializing in media policy at the Penn.

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

“It is often framed as a corporate drama with key players as the main characters, but there is hardly any discussion of the public interest,” Pickard added.

The Additional Element: The Former President

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

Think back to the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary withdrawal of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in press briefings.

Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. This can be interpreted as ownership that will insulate him from journalistic oversight. That is part of why he appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.

Trump has reason to favor that company more. For one thing, it is led 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 placed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, known for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that storied news network.

A Possibility of Continued Turmoil

Notably, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a standalone company. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a secure position. That setup could pave the way for CNN for another sale. The cycle continues.

According to Timothy Wu, a great deal of this is a violation of antitrust statutes, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance stated that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.

“Both acquisition attempts would be detrimental 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 in this situation, the bigger problem remains.

“The present media landscape is a very anti-democratic system, but we shouldn’t give in to a sense of powerlessness,” Pickard said. Policy decisions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this overly commercial monster, and revised policy decisions can tackle it.

Can reform occur in an era where the head of the FCC will not confirm that the agency is independent? Change is highly improbable now, but that doesn’t mean it will be impossible forever.

Measures that support independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, subsidize public media, and outlaw the accumulation of media power in too few hands are not only possible – they are vital for a healthy democracy.

In the world of media ownership, larger is not superior. And news organizations including CNN cannot be tools in the most recent acquisition battle.