By Danny R. Johnson -Political News Editor
WASHINGTON – In late October 2024, as the presidential election drew to a close, podcaster Joe Rogan made headlines. After hosting Donald Trump for a three-hour conversation in his Austin, Texas studio, Rogan revealed he had discussed a similar arrangement with Kamala Harris’s campaign.
“They offered a date for Tuesday, but I would have had to travel to her and they only wanted to do an hour,” he posted on X. “I strongly feel the best way to do it is in the studio in Austin.” Consequently, Rogan declined to interview the vice president.
Some people called him a diva, arguing that if you’re offered an interview with a presidential candidate, you should get on a plane. However, Rogan could set his own terms. Unlike the competitive world of D.C. journalism, where interviewing a major candidate boosts one’s status, Rogan is the most popular podcaster alive. His audience consists of right-leaning men who enjoy mixed martial arts, stand-up comedy, and wild speculation about aliens (space, not illegal); they are not political obsessives. Rogan knew that Harris needed him more than he needed her.
Nothing symbolizes the changed media landscape of this past election more than Rogan’s casual brush-off. Within a week, his interview with Trump racked up more than 40 million views on YouTube alone, and millions more on other platforms. No single event, apart from the Harris-Trump debate, had a bigger audience this election cycle. By comparison, Harris’s contentious interview with Bret Baier on Fox News, the most popular of the cable networks, drew 8 million viewers to the live broadcast, and another 6.5 million on YouTube.
Those figures demonstrate the absurdity of talking about the “mainstream media” as many still do, especially those who disparage it. According to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey, Americans with a wide range of political views generally agree about which outlets fall within this definition: newspapers such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and television networks such as CNN. Everyone else who’s disseminating information at scale is treated like a couple of hipsters running a craft brewery who are valiantly competing with Budweiser.
That’s simply not true. Rogan is the “mainstream media” now. Elon Musk, too. In the 2024 campaign, both presidential candidates largely skipped newspaper and television sit-downs—the tougher, more focused “accountability” interviews—in favor of talking directly with online personalities. (J. D. Vance, to his credit, made a point of taking reporters’ questions at his events and sat down with CNN and the Times, among others.) The result was that both Trump and Harris got away with reciting slogans rather than outlining policies. Trump has not outlined how his promised mass deportations might work in practice, nor did we ever find out if Harris still held firm to her previous stances, such as the abolition of the death penalty and the decriminalization of sex work. The vacuum was filled with vibes.
THE CONCEPT OF the mainstream media arose in the 20th century, when reaching a mass audience required infrastructure printing press, or a broadcast frequency, or a physical cable into people’s houses—and institutions. That reality made the media easy to vilify. “The press became ‘the media’ because the word had a manipulative, Madison Avenue, all-encompassing connotation, and the press hated it,” Richard Nixon’s speechwriter William Safire wrote in his 1975 memoir.
Somehow, the idea that the mainstream media is made up of major corporations has persisted, even though the internet, smartphones, and social media have made it possible for anyone to reach an audience of millions. Two of the most important information sources of this election cycle have a job that didn’t exist even a decade ago: Acyn Torabi and Aaron Rupar, who watch hours of political rallies and TV appearances to clip them for social media. These “clippers” can drive days of discussion, particularly when the context of a remark is disputed—such as when Vance’s 2021 remarks characterizing Democrats as “childless cat ladies” went viral.
Today, the divide between the “mainstream” and the outsiders is not about reach. Sixty-three percent of American adults get at least some of their news from television, 42 percent from radio, and 26 percent from print publications, according to a 2024 Pew report. But 54 percent get at least some of their news from social media—meaning that, alongside established outlets, they’re relying on sources such as Infowars videos, Facebook memes, and posts on X.
The divide is not about influence, either. During Trump’s victory speech in Florida, he invited the UFC boss Dana White to say a few words. White thanked the streamer Adin Ross, the podcaster Theo Von, the YouTubers known as the Nelk Boys, and the former NFL players Will Compton and Taylor Lewan, as well as Rogan. During the campaign, all of these men had hosted Trump for softball interviews, often with the encouragement of Trump’s 18-year-old son, Barron; Ross even gave Trump a gold Rolex and a customized Tesla Cybertruck during their livestream. (You don’t get treatment like that from the Wall Street Journal editorial board.)
Trump’s showmanship, aggression, and ability to confabulate suit this new environment. His inconsistency is not a problem—these interviews are designed to be entertaining and personal, not to nail down his current position on abortion or interrogate his income-tax policies. Trump has been especially enthusiastic in his embrace of this new media class, but the Democrats also understand its power: In 2023, Jill Biden addressed a White House holiday party for hundreds of influencers. “You’re here because you all represent the changing way people receive news and information,” she reportedly said. At the Democratic National Convention, more than 200 “content creators” were credentialed along with traditional journalists.
Being outside the mainstream is, today, seen as more authentic, more in tune with Real America.
Finally, the media divide is not about resources, either. Although some of the legacy outlets are still large, well-funded companies, so are many of the upstarts. Vance, Peter Thiel, and Vivek Ramaswamy have all invested in the video platform Rumble, which went public in 2022 with a reported valuation of $2.1 billion. When The Daily Wire, a right-wing online news organization, tried to hire the internet personality Steven Crowder, he was offered $50 million over four years. He rejected this, calling deals like these “slave contracts.” As for Rogan, he has apparently chosen to forsake fact-checkers and lawyers in favor of some guy named Jamie who looks up stuff on Google, but he doesn’t have to do that. His last deal with Spotify was reportedly worth as much as $250 million. He could hire a whole newsroom if he wanted to. But Rogan
has intuited, correctly, that many Americans no longer trust institutions. They prefer to receive their news from trusted individuals.
THE MAIN BENEFICIARY of our outdated ideas about the “mainstream media” is the political right. Not so long ago, conservatives resented their exclusion from the MSM, because they thought it painted them as extreme: Sarah Palin complained about the “lamestream media,” while the late Rush Limbaugh preferred to call it the “state-controlled media” or the “drive-by media.”
But that’s changed. Being outside the mainstream is, today, seen as more authentic, more in tune with Real America. Trump’s constant criticisms of the “fake-news media” have been enthusiastically embraced by his down-ballot copycats. Complaints about alleged liberal media bias have been amplified by commentators who are themselves overtly partisan: Tucker Carlson, Russell Brand, Dan Bongino, Megyn Kelly, Charlie Kirk, Alex Jones. The underlying premise is that all media skew toward one side or another, but at least these people are honest about it. That allows them to speak alongside Trump at rallies (Kelly), embrace bizarre conspiracy theories (Jones), talk about their encounters with demons (Carlson), and continue to work despite multiple allegations of sexual assault (Brand, who has denied the claims)—all things that would be out-of-bounds for actual journalists.
And let’s be clear, some influencers are very cozy indeed with the subjects they cover. You may not have heard of the Instagrammer and Substacker Jessica Reed Kraus, who was formerly a lifestyle influencer, but she has more than 400,000 subscribers on Substack, where she boasts about her access to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Trump. In January, she joined Kennedy on his catamaran in Hawaii, sipping mimosas and eating pineapple; she attended Trump’s Super Bowl party at Mar-a-Lago. Reed Kraus is open about focusing on personalities, not policy. “Average Americans don’t have the time or patience to sift through what separates one candidate’s health care plan from another,” she told Semafor. “But they relate and respond to intimate aspects that speak to one’s character.
Often, these very same influencers are the loudest voices complaining about the failures of “the media.” On the eve of the election, Rogan hosted Musk, that other great titan of the new media, to make the case for Trump—whom Rogan then endorsed. “The legacy media, the mainstream media, is not balanced at all,” said Musk, who personally donated more than $100 million to Trump’s reelection efforts. “They’re just a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party.” Never mind that, for example, CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski broke the single most damaging story to the Harris campaign—that she had indeed, in Trump’s phrase, supported “transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.” (This became a staple of Republican attack ads.) Nor did it matter to Musk that, amid his complaints about the standards of the mainstream media, he has repeatedly promoted fake stories: about Nancy Pelosi’s husband, about gangs attacking polling stations during the recent Venezuelan election, and even about a dead squirrel whose euthanasia the right saw as evidence of government overreach. When he is proved to be wrong—often by the same legacy media that he decries—he tends to delete his posts without a correction or an apology.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? To me, the picture looks bleak: more conspiracy theories, more noise, more loudmouths complaining about other people’s bias. It’s hard to see how journalistic institutions get rebuilt when so many of their business models have collapsed. The migration of ad dollars to Google and Meta means that—with few exceptions—20th-century newsrooms are not coming back.
We cannot reverse the drift from institutions to individuals. Nor can the new partisan outlets be forced to adopt 20th-century norms. The Fairness Doctrine—the policy, repealed under Ronald Reagan, that required broadcasters to reflect contrasting views—is gone for good. We must let go of the notion that “mainstream media” is a category reserved only for journalists guided by a professional code of ethics, a mission of public service, and an aspiration toward objectivity or at least fairness.
Many independent reporters do good and important work—I’m thinking of YouTuber Coffeezilla’s work on crypto scams, for example, and Jason Garcia’s investigations into Floridian politics on his Substack, Seeking Rents—but they are surrounded by a clamorous sea of partisans who operate under new and different rules. Flaunt your bias, get cozy with your subjects, and don’t harsh their mellow by asking uncomfortable questions. “You are the media now,” Musk told X users as the election results came in. It was the truest statement he had made in months.
To the folks building their own platforms, to the influencers hopping on catamarans with politicians, to the streamers handing out Teslas to their guests—well done on your triumph. Welcome to the mainstream media. Now hold yourselves to the same standards you demand from others. But I am being a little sarcastic because if you have been following MAGA Media, accountability and truthfulness is not their cup of tea.
