President Trump came into office promising to decapitate mainstream media. He bullied and sued media companies, blocked or curtailed access for reporters, and elevated nontraditional news sources.
- Yet mainstream media ends the year as dominant as ever in capturing Trump's attention and setting Washington's agenda.
Why it matters: Trump remains a voracious consumer of so-called legacy news and takes more calls from more reporters than any president in our lifetime. His days are often filled with responses — not to MAGA media or X influencers, but to conventional stories from conventional reporters at conventional media publications.
Trump administration efforts to restrict the proximity of some White House reporters, or boot them from Pentagon workspace, have done little to slow the flow of leaks to legacy media from inside those buildings.
- Yes, his lawsuits against the big networks and others have a chilling effect on coverage, reporters at those networks tell us. And, yes, some legacy voices — notably the opinion section of The Washington Post — are drifting rightward in the age of Trump.
- And what the Pentagon calls its "brand new" press corps of Trump-friendly outlets (including MAGA provocateur Laura Loomer) was welcomed into the building this week for exclusive briefings after traditional news organizations refused to sign a new press policy.
- But it's hard to argue legacy media has been defanged when the president himself spends his days engaging with it and reacting to deeply reported stories that clearly hit a nerve.
The big picture: The era of Big News is over — the days of networks and newspapers and traditional media alone setting the agenda are long past.
- Influencers, podcasters, social media stars, and independent thinkers and journalists are often just as powerful as old-line media in shaping how most people see reality day to day. But these newer players often feast on old-fashioned reporting to provide their daily buffet of content on new platforms.
- The media dynamic in Washington has changed less than we expected in 2025. At the beginning of the year, both X and MAGA media were ascendant, even dominant, in shaping the national conversation. X remains a force, especially for Republicans, the tech world and the media. But MAGA has been mired in months of infighting, often about personality or identity disputes.
- That said, we're clearly in the post-news era, in which people are forming views and realities based on numerous inputs. Yet even in this post-news era, news still matters. A lot.
Case in point: Look at how The Washington Post drove days of coverage and social-media posts — and sent the Trump administration scrambling — with last week's report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered commanders to kill "narco-terrorists" aboard alleged drug-smuggling boats off South America. (Hegseth's response.)
- The New York Times later reported: "Hegseth's directive did not specifically address what should happen if a first missile turned out not to fully accomplish all of those things. And, the officials said, his order was not a response to surveillance footage showing that at least two people on the boat survived the first blast."
- The reporting kicked even Trump-friendly Republican committee chairs into oversight action. (Hegseth said on Tuesday he "did not personally see survivors," and cited the "fog of war" in defending the follow-on strike in a September attack on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean.)
Or look at how the most powerful people in technology rallied to defend White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks after The New York Times this week ran a five-byline investigation into his holdings in realms where he shapes policies.
- If The New York Times is unreliable and irrelevant, why did Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff and other big-name execs feel obligated to publicly defend Sacks?
- Or look at the way a beat reporter, Axios global affairs correspondent Barak Ravid, has dominated coverage of Israel and Middle East peace talks. Trump himself has been doing interviews with Ravid to discuss his views.
The bottom line: For all his anti-media rhetoric, Trump remains the most accessible president of modern times to many mainstream reporters.
- We're not diminishing the damage Trump has done with lawsuits and constant claims of "fake news." It's real. Lawsuits drain money, time and attention.
- But as we've seen at Axios this past year, interest in clinical, serious, credible reporting has never been higher — including inside this White House.
Go deeper: Jim VandeHei from last year, "Why clear-eyed journalism matters."
