Can anybody hear that? It could be the sound of legacy media outlets collectively sighing, furtively relieved not to have to report on Kamala Harris for the next four years. What would they talk about? How many articles can somebody write discussing the semantics of a cackle or attempting to translate a muddled reply punctuated with hems and haws? Besides, Harris doesn’t generate clicks – not like Donald Trump. As much as so many left-leaning publications and networks appear to despise the president-elect and his antics, and as hard as they’ve tried to discredit and destroy him, some are likely hoping his return to the White House will at least be a catalyst to another “Trump bump,” a term coined after several news outlets saw a boost in customers and revenue during his 2016 campaign. But will it happen again?
The Trump Bump
A few months into Trump’s first term, The New York Times passed three million digital subscribers. When it hit seven million subscribers in November of 2020, it wrote, “There is little doubt that Donald J. Trump’s presidency has helped lift The Times’s subscription business, and the readership numbers have risen at a steady pace during his years in office.” During the 12 months preceding March of 2017, DC’s most prominent newspaper saw a 75% increase in new subscribers and reached 300,000 digital-only subscribers for the first time, a number that, by 2020, would be near three million, but which gradually decreased during Biden’s term. Worse, it lost 250,000 subscribers last month because its billionaire owner blocked an editorial endorsement Kamala Harris.
“In 2018,” explained the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), “‘Trump’ was the fourth-most-used word in the New York Times. On average, Trump was directly mentioned two to three times in every article, and indirectly mentioned an additional once or twice.” That almost sounds creepy and stalker-like. What about cable? “[F]rom August 2015 to November 2016, cable news aired about two hours per day (123 minutes) of just Trump talking.” Meanwhile, some networks were relishing “record ratings and huge increases in ad revenue by fetishizing the president.” Just before the 2016 election, CNN was expected to make $100 million more than in a typical election year. Fox News, NBC, and MSNBC also benefited from Trump’s entry into politics. Some networks were giddy and couldn’t hide it: “The Trump spectacle may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” said Les Moonves, the network’s chief executive, at a 2016 conference in San Francisco. “The money’s rolling in, and this is fun.”
By the fall of 2020, “There is wall-to-wall coverage for every outrageous word and action,” wrote CJR, “often leading outlets to inadvertently report incorrect information in their bid to keep everyone glued to their seats. They fact-check Trump constantly, but often only after airing – and, in many cases, repeating – misinformation. This can create what psychologists call an ‘illusory truth effect,’ where people end up remembering the falsehood, forgetting the correction, and then attributing their misinformation to the very source that had tried to correct it!” Of course, the media’s corrections haven’t always been correct, further misleading the public and confusing the heck out of anybody foolish enough not to unearth more details to check the validity of their information.
Thus, Trump Derangement Syndrome was born, an inadvertent creation that might’ve been unintentionally created by those responsible for keeping the electorate informed. What’s funny but not laughable is that some people within the press believe Trump wrecked the credibility of journalism. Yet a strong case could be made that legacy media outlets, in their coverage of Trump, destroyed their own credibility.
Slump or Bump?
Even if a Trump bump does come, how long will it last? A lot has happened in the last nine years. Numerous journalists, pundits, and smear merchants have constantly tried but failed to destroy Trump’s political career. Some have maliciously misconstrued his words and even published the occasional hit piece, selling outrage to gain customers. Much of the news coverage during Trump’s 2024 campaign turned out to be fallacious or insignificant and hyperbolized. Not to mention, for the last six months, some liberal news organizations led their dedicated audiences through a sensationalistic journey and toyed with their emotions, trying to persuade true-blue believers that Biden was “sharp as a tack,” that Trump was a Nazi, and that Harris was a flawless candidate. The result for some people is a post–Election Day wreckage that has left them enraged, still clinging to the narratives these outlets recklessly spoon-fed them. Now they write in all capital letters to scream on social media, blaming racism and misogyny for Harris’ failed campaign and shaming anybody who voted against her.
However, in recent days, some liberals not possessed by progressivism appeared to have lifted their propagandistic veils and are now looking back and realizing their news sources had crafted alternative realities they then innocently absorbed. A slew of Americans “no longer believe that the legacy media understands or represents them,” said journalist and author Rob Henderson last Wednesday, writing in his eponymously named Substack newsletter. “If these institutions wish to regain credibility, they might consider hiring more journalists who seek to understand American life as it is, rather than viewing it merely as an ideological battlefield.”
On top of it all, Americans’ trust in mass media remains at an all-time low, an issue that could’ve unfolded because some outlets chose to push ideology instead of facts, propaganda instead of information, and narratives favoring their preferred party instead of unadulterated and unbiased reporting. Myriad people have recently announced on social media that they are turning away from the news, meaning a Trump slump seems more likely than a bump. But when combined with mass media’s loss of credibility and trust, the dominance of podcasts, and the rise of independent journalism on platforms like Substack, it’s possible legacy media might soon be irrelevant.
