Freefalling media’s grim prospects as reach, influence wane

As 2025 dawns, legacy media are in freefall — their public trust in tatters, their viewership and readership cratering. 

The wounds are a result of two factors: First, the landscape the legacy media once controlled is no more.

No longer do the liberal media ecosystems of New York and Washington, DC, set the terms of the national conversation.

No longer do a handful of major corporate entities like ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, the New York Times and Washington Post regulate thought and debate. 

Instead, the most-listened-to broadcast is the Joe Rogan podcast out of Austin, Texas, averaging 11 million viewers per episode.

For context, CNN can’t attract more than 400,000 viewers to its primetime lineup these days, less than 4% of what Rogan generates. 

Online, Elon Musk’s X is the No. 1 source for news in the world.

Meanwhile, to take one example, the Washington Post lost more than $70 million and 50% of its audience in 2023 and is reportedly on track to lose more than $75 million in 2024. Several prominent reporters have fled the paper for more liberal confines, such as The Atlantic. 

Second, and a major reason for the exodus, is the loss of respect that followed the legacy media’s gross breaches of integrity and ethics in recent years.

Many in the media debased themselves by blatantly lying about the state of Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities (or lack thereof).

They openly cheered on Kamala Harris’ campaign and tried to Etch-a-Sketch her radical positions (and those of her goofy running mate, Tim Walz) out of existence, laughably selling them as joyous, centrist candidates. 

And all the while, they trashed Donald Trump and his supporters as fascist and uninformed.

But these efforts failed — and as Trump swept his way to a resounding victory, his triumph underscored both the waning influence of the mainstream media and the public’s disdain.

Overall, according to Gallup, just 27% of independent voters trust the media, and only 12% of Republicans say the same. 

With those factors as the backdrop, watch for these three media trends in 2025. 

More journalists going independent: The old days of brick-and-mortar newsrooms as the absolutely necessary requirement for quality reporting are over.

Great investigative reporters, including Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, Bari Weiss and Catherine Herridge, have been jumping over to subscriber-based Substack or, in Weiss’ case, launching the Free Press, her own online publication. 

The money for those who succeed in these forums can be quite lucrative, as in seven figures lucrative.

But perhaps most importantly, these writers’ corporate gatekeepers are no more, freeing them to control their own content.

Pay cuts and layoffs: The days of big contracts for network and cable news hosts are coming to an end.

We’ve already seen “stars” like Rachel Maddow take a $5 million annual pay cut, while veterans such as Chris Wallace jumped ship at CNN for his own podcast instead. Reason: The 77-year-old, who was reportedly pulling down $7 million annually, was told he could stay only if he took a sizable slash in salary. 

Why? The ratings simply aren’t there to justify such huge contracts. Without strong demand, advertisers find other places to spend their money. Cord-cutting also continues to accelerate, with more than 10 million people saying goodbye to pay-TV services in favor of streaming.

When you add it all up, falling revenues and fewer subscribers mean smaller contracts and likely large-scale job losses. It’s that simple. 

An explosion of defamation suits: ABC News recently settled with Trump after anchor George Stephanopoulos repeated — on 10 occasions in a single interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) — that the former and future president had been “convicted of rape.”

It was a lie, and Trump rightly called the former Clinton operative out on it, via a defamation suit.

ABC, likely fearing what could be revealed in the discovery phase of a trial — and knowing full well that Stephanopoulos’ unambiguous words would simply be read back to a jury — settled, paying Trump $15 million plus another $1 million in legal fees. 

Some media observers on the left cried foul, arguing ABC had been bullied into settling.

“You can’t have the news industry worrying about this sort of stuff when they’re just simply doing their jobs,” whined Jim Acosta on CNN. 

Because apparently “doing their jobs” includes intentionally referring to a rape verdict that never happened. 

Moving forward in 2025, I expect more such lawsuits will be leveled when media outlets lie, as Stephanopoulos did, or twist the facts, as actor Justin Baldoni alleges the New York Times did in a $250 million defamation suit filed Tuesday. 

The legacy media — with a few exceptions — are on the brink of their most brutal year yet as Trump heads back to the White House. 

It’s a perilous position for an industry that has inflicted its fate almost entirely upon itself. 

Joe Concha is the author of “Progressively Worse: Why Today’s Democrats Ain’t Your Daddy’s Donkeys.”