Donald Trump’s win in November caused seismic waves across the country, and it shook up more than just politics. It served as a clear wakeup call to legacy media outlets.
“They’re doing soul searching, and I think it’s going to be reflected in some of the content we see on the air and on websites and in newspapers,” says veteran journalist Howard Polskin who now reports on the media. “I think everyone is going to be a lot more measured.”
MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezinski quickly saw the writing on the wall. “They are overseeing a sinking ship,” says Curtis Houck with Newsbusters. “Joe and Mika, you could think of as the captains of the USS Resistance.”
After being vocal Trump critics, they met with the president-elect at Mar-a Lago and are now starting to play nice as they made clear recently on the broadcast. “Joe and I realize it’s time to do something different,” Brezinski told viewers. “That starts with not only talking about Donald Trump but also talking with him.”
The move by Joe and Mika makes sense based on ratings alone. Following the election, MSNBC’s total viewership dropped 38% and CNN is down 27%.
Houck sees this as desperate times. “Part of that desperation is going to meet with the ‘fascist’ himself,” Houck tells CBN News. “And they’ve admitted in previous weeks that they want to do the show differently, which I take that to mean, perhaps go back to the Morning Joe that it used to be.”
But it might be too late to do any good. Trust in the media has been fading for years. Back in 1972, only 6 percent of Americans said they didn’t trust the media. By the Clinton years in 1997, that number increased to 15 percent. When Trump first took office, it jumped to 24 percent and now, 8 years later, 36 percent of Americans don’t trust the media at all.
“That is such an extraordinary number, and it should be a shock wave in newsrooms across this country,” says John Solomon, the CEO of Just The News. “Unfortunately, most newsrooms are still in denial…so I fear the pattern of misreporting, of loss of audience, loss of connection with audience, loss of perspective with audience, is going to continue.”
In this news media landscape, we’re already seeing a trend of out with the old and in with the new. Trump took advantage of this and added a new wrinkle in 2024 by reaching out to podcasters, streaming services and social media influencers.
“You saw him go after podcast platforms,” Houck says. “He talked to his son, Barron, about this. He had a young comms team that thought about, where do young people get their news?”
Houck believes Trump has changed the way campaigns will communicate in the future: more emphasis on casual connection and far less on what’s seen as traditional media. “Candidates venturing into the podcast sphere, new media atmosphere, whatever you want to call it, is this generation’s question of yesteryear, of which candidate would I want to get a beer with.”
This new playing field could pit two media classes against each other with the battle playing out at The White House itself. The legacy media has encamped in the briefing room for decades. John Solomon, though, recounts to CBN News a conversation with Trump in 2020 when talk had already begun about shaking up how business is done.
“I would not be surprised if you saw in a few weeks, the announcement of a creation of a new White House Correspondents Association and an alternate correspondence association,” Solomon speculates.
That could mean a group of more conservative outlets and possibly popular podcasters. “Maybe create a second press room,” Solomon says. “Maybe it’s in the Old Executive Office Building, which was where the discussions were in August of 2020, and let new media come in and let’s see who covers the press conference more accurately, more fairly.”
Whether that happens or not, it’s clear this new media landscape is spreading from print and television to the social media terrain. With the platform X now owned by Trump-supporting Elon Musk, liberals are fleeing in droves, moving to Bluesky, started by Twitter Founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey.
“The news environment is going to be atomized even more,” says veteran journalist Howard Polskin with the website therighting.com. “So now you’re going to have social media platforms just for mainstreamers and liberals. You’re going to have some just for the near right. Then you’re going to have social media for the far right…that’s just how the media business is going these days.”
It’s all moving very fast. Just the way Trump likes it.
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