This Corporate Battle For the Cable News Network Shows The Extent to Which Dysfunctional American Journalism Has Become.

Late Thursday, while unconfirmed reports spread concerning an incident at Brown University, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins used social media, highlighting the uncertainty and guiding the public to her channel's 9pm newscast.

Even though the network is hardly a perfect news source, her message resonated for a lot of people. It remains one of the broadcasters where one can locate reality-based and largely dependable reporting – especially during breaking news situations such as the one developing in the vicinity of a New Hampshire storage facility.

A Precarious Situation During a High-Stakes Tug-of-War

Yet CNN, now 45 years old, finds itself in a precarious state as two giant media corporations battle over ownership of its corporate owner, Warner Bros Discovery.

No matter the result, the fate of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of mergers and acquisitions, instead of as a question of what benefits the news-consuming public.

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

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

“It gets presented as a corporate drama with influential figures as the central actors, but there is scant discussion of the public interest,” Pickard said.

A Further Element: Donald Trump

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

Think back to the shouts of “CNN sucks!” at the president’s rallies, his administration’s punitive revocation of reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials, or his clashes 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 criticism and scrutiny. That is part of why he seems to come down on the side of Paramount Skydance, which has made a aggressive takeover attempt.

He has grounds to favor that bidder more. For one thing, it is controlled by David Ellison, son of the pro-Trump Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people.

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

A Possibility of Further Uncertainty

Significantly, if Netflix prevails, CNN and other cable outlets would first be carved out into a independent unit. That would be a welcome development to many at the network, but it’s not exactly a guarantee of stability. That arrangement could pave the way for CNN for another sale. The cycle continues.

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

“Either merger would be harmful to the country, and both should be challenged by anti-trust authorities,” Wu argued.

The Core Challenge and a Path Forward

Whatever happens regarding CNN, the underlying crisis persists.

“The present media landscape is a profoundly structure that undermines democracy, but we shouldn’t give in to the belief that change is impossible,” Pickard emphasized. Government actions – originating in the 1930s and 1940s – helped to create this overly commercial monster, and new 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? Reform is very unlikely now, but that is not to say it will never happen.

Measures that strengthen independent news organizations, reinforce local journalism, fund public media, and outlaw the concentration of media power in a handful of hands are within reach – they are vital for a healthy democracy.

Regarding media ownership, bigger isn’t better. And news organizations including CNN must not be tools in the most recent corporate chess match.