Many Americans no longer rely on the legacy media when it comes to the news. More and more, they are using social media as a tool to access information and news. Pew Research found that daily newspaper circulation nationwide, including subscriptions and print circulation, fell to less than 21 million in 2022 when compared to 62 million in 1980. Another study showed that there has been a precipitous drop in audiences for local TV news broadcasts.

Accompanying this trend is the rise of independent media. Pew found that more than a quarter of American adults get their news from YouTube. Specifically, 49 percent of YouTube watchers consume content from news organizations, while 42 percent consume content from independent news creators.

The numbers paint a very clear picture. A significant number of Americans are moving away from the legacy media for a variety of reasons, most notably the blatant lack of fair and unbiased coverage. These days, it seems like journalists do everything but what they are supposed to do, and this election season has highlighted just how bad it is. From the allegations that “60 Minutes” spliced and edited clips of an interview with Kamala Harris to obviously clear bias by ABC moderators during the Trump-Harris presidential debate, Americans are tuning out traditional news sources.

This trend is further underscored by the Harris and Trump campaigns, as both candidates have moved to podcast interviews over legacy media to spread their messages. Both have recently appeared on popular podcasts: Harris on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast and Trump on the “Joe Rogan Experience.”

This trend is obvious to everyone, perhaps most notably the owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos.

A week before the election, the Amazon founder wrote an op-ed in the Post explaining his decision to have the paper abstain from endorsing a presidential candidate, the public’s clear lack of trust in the media due to bias, and the mainstream media’s lack of credibility across the board. He went on to acknowledge that the Post and the New York Times only speak to certain elites, “[M]ore and more, we talk to ourselves.” Bezos ended his op-ed by stating his goals for the Post in the future, “Now more than ever the world needs a credible, trusted, and independent voice.”

This realization from Bezos seems to follow a similar path of another famous billionaire, none other than Elon Musk.

With Elon’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, now X, he set forth to protect free speech on one of the most important social media platforms. Musk has described himself as a “free speech absolutist” and wrote in a message to Twitter advertisers that he acquired the platform to ensure that Twitter remains “a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.”

Additionally, Musk oversaw the release of the Twitter Files, which confirmed that the government and its various agencies had engaged in censorship of content on Twitter. The Twitter Files showcased the government’s involvement in demanding COVID-19 “misinformation” on Twitter be removed, and revealed that the FBI was working in tandem with Twitter to promulgate certain narratives such as the suppression of Hunter Biden’s laptop story leading up to the 2020 election.

Since Musk bought Twitter, X has become a reliable outlet for the aforementioned independent journalists and news sources to reach an audience without censorship, post throttling, or biased factchecking.

Between Elon Musk’s new X and Jeff Bezos’s call for a new direction for the Post, it seems that a few in positions of power recognize that democracy requires vigorous debate and free speech in order to function as it should.

The controversial issue of censorship and outright bias on social media platforms has been an ongoing battle in state legislatures and on the federal level since the height of censorship during the coronavirus pandemic. State lawmakers have addressed this problem by introducing legislation that would hold social media platforms accountable when they censor or deplatform constituents for viewpoint discrimination. In fact, since 2020, 70 bills have been introduced across the country in state legislatures with this purpose in mind.

While these tech moguls waking up and taking a stand is a good step for the free speech movement, there is also much that citizens and state lawmakers can do to keep the momentum going. It is clear that Americans’ increased use of social media coupled with their distrust of the mainstream media, that the tide could be turning.

Samantha Fillmore (sfillmore@heartland.org) is the senior state government relations manager at The Heartland Institute.

Image: Lewis Ogden