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On Thursday evening, amid swirling speculation regarding an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins took to social media, highlighting the uncertainty and directing people to her channel's 9pm newscast.

While the network is hardly a perfect news source, her words rang true to many. It is one of the broadcasters where there exists fact-based and largely reliable reporting – notably during breaking news situations such as the one unfolding close to a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Vulnerable Position Amid a Business Tug-of-War

But the news network, now middle-aged, finds itself in a vulnerable situation as two huge media empires battle over ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

No matter the result, the destiny of CNN has turned into a high-risk game of corporate ownership, instead of as a question of what helps the news-consuming public.

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

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

“The narrative is crafted as a corporate drama with powerful individuals as the main characters, but there is scant discussion of the common good,” Pickard said.

The Complicating Factor: Political Influence

This situation is complicated by Donald Trump’s views about a network he has long portrayed as perhaps his primary “fake news” antagonist.

Remember the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at Trump's rallies, his team's disciplinary revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his tense exchanges with Collins in official meetings.

Trump now claims that CNN needs new ownership. You can read that as ownership that will protect him from criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he appears to favor Paramount Skydance, which has made a hostile bid.

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.

The company, parent of CBS News, also recently installed the conservative Bari Weiss, noted for her “anti-woke” beliefs, as the editor-in-chief of that venerable news network.

An Outcome of Further Uncertainty

Notably, if Netflix is successful, CNN and other cable outlets would first be spun off into a standalone company. That would be a relief to many at the network, but it’s hardly a guarantee of stability. That arrangement could set up CNN for a future sale. The cycle continues.

In the view of Timothy Wu, a lot of this is against the law, anyway. The prominent critic of big tech’s dominance wrote recently that anti-trust laws should disallow both deals.

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

The Bigger Problem and a Way Ahead

Whatever happens with this particular battle, the bigger problem remains.

“Our current system is a highly anti-democratic system, but we ought not succumb to learned helplessness,” Pickard said. Regulatory choices – dating back to the 1930s and 1940s – helped to foster this overly commercial monster, and different policy decisions can fix it.

Is this likely in an era where the top communications regulator refuses to acknowledge that the agency is independent? Reform is a distant prospect now, but that should not imply it will never happen.

Measures that strengthen independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and outlaw the accumulation of media power in too few hands are not only possible – they are essential for a robust democracy.

When it comes to media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations like CNN shouldn’t be pieces in the newest merger game.