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Late Thursday, as rumors swirled regarding the Brown University gunman, the network's Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.

While it is by no means a perfect news source, her words seemed accurate for numerous observers. It remains one of the organizations where there exists grounded and mostly reliable reporting – particularly during crises such as the one unfolding in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.

An Uncertain Position Amid a Business Tug-of-War

But CNN, now four and a half decades old, finds itself in a uncertain position as two giant media corporations vie for ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.

No matter the result, the future of CNN has turned into a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, rather than as a question of what serves the news-consuming public.

“This is yet another example of the fundamental flaws with roots in many years of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, writer of “Democracy Without Journalism?” and a media policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

The debate about which company will control Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – overlooks a more important point.

“It gets presented as a business story with key players as the central actors, but there is very little discussion of the societal benefit,” Pickard said.

The Complicating Layer: The Former President

The network's predicament is made more complex by Donald Trump’s longstanding stance about a network he has frequently denounced as perhaps his primary “fake news” adversary.

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

Trump now asserts that the network requires new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from journalistic oversight. That is part of why he appears to support Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.

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

The company, owner of CBS News, also recently appointed the right-leaning Bari Weiss, famous for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the top editor of that storied news network.

A Future of Further Uncertainty

Significantly, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a separate entity. That would be a relief to many at the network, but it’s hardly a safe harbor. That arrangement could set up CNN for another sale. The cycle continues.

According to Timothy Wu, much of this is illegal, anyway. The well-known analyst of big tech’s dominance recently argued that competition laws should prohibit both deals.

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

The Fundamental Challenge and a Potential Solution

No matter the outcome in this situation, the bigger problem endures.

“The present media landscape is a very anti-democratic system, but we ought not succumb to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard noted. Government actions – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this overly commercial monster, and revised policy decisions can address 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 not happen in the future.

Policies that bolster independent news organizations, bolster local journalism, finance public media, and prohibit the consolidation of media power in a handful of hands are not only possible – they are essential for a healthy democracy.

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