A complete collapse in public trust in mainstream news media is changing how political parties reach voters, and according to a left-leaning tech group’s warning to the Democratic Party, it is conservatives who are adapting in the digital age, not the left.
Trust in the mainstream media has been plummeting for the past half a century, but it took a precipitous decline after the last two presidential election cycles, the pandemic, and the way the media apparatus has repeatedly overstepped the bounds of journalism to undermine the Trump Administration.
In 2020, a dubious 40 percent of Americans held a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the mainstream media according to Gallup, but that number has plummeted to a mere 28 percent. The latest NPR News/Marist poll reveals that by nearly a three-to-one margin, the American people do not trust the mainstream media — 74 percent to 25 percent. Only six percent of adults have a great deal of confidence in the media. The largest share — 39 percent — have not very much confidence in the media and the remaining 45 percent have no confidence at all, according to the survey.
With so few Americans trusting mainstream news as their source for current events and cultural and political information, political campaigns, super PACs and advocacy groups are being forced to adapt to reach potential voters where they spend time — in digital spaces like podcasts, YouTube, X, Facebook, Instagram, Truth Social and TikTok. Interestingly, it is conservatives who are adapting to the world of digital voter connection at a significantly faster rate than liberals, at least according to Democrat tech group.
A new report on digital advertising between the years of 2020 and 2025 from Tech for Campaigns, a progressive group that focuses on voter turnout for Democrats, warns leftists about the advantage conservatives have carved out in digital spaces.
The report warns Democrats about the substantial lead conservatives and independents have over liberals in the podcasting space alone, a digital realm that has exploded over the past five years and is rapidly eclipsing mainstream news as a source of current events, cultural discourse, and political news.
Conservative and independent voices like Joe Rogan, Candance Owens, Megyn Kelly and Dan Bonjino, not to mention tens of thousands of smaller niche podcasters, are filling the void traditional media has left. Tech for Campaigns notes that as of December 2024, conservative podcasts had nearly three times the audience that liberal podcasts did. That only accelerated as President Donald Trump resumed office. By April 2025, conservative voices dominated four of the top 10 podcasts in the United States among all podcasts, not exclusively political podcasts.
The report found that commercial advertising — such as TV ads on commercial networks — still make up the bulk of political advertising, despite voter trust in the mainstream media hitting rock-bottom in 2025. According to Tech for Campaigns, just 36 percent of political budgets were reserved for digital advertising in the 2024 election, compared to 78 percent for commercial budgets. That is a big issue, because the political world is behind the private sector when it comes to adopting digital advertising and reaching voters on social platforms now that trust in traditional news has collapsed.
However, one side of the aisle has carved out a significant advantage in digital spaces even in off-year elections. The Tech for Campaigns report warns Democrats that Republicans are ahead of the game when it comes to maintaining a digital presence and strong digital connection with potential voters even in off-year cycles.
The report notes that between the years of 2020 and 2025, conservative advocacy groups barely slowed down their digital messaging to potential voters, cutting their spending on Meta, the parent of Instagram and Facebook, by only three percent in non-election years. Left-wing groups cut their spending by 75 percent in off years according to the report, focusing most of their spending on election years. Democrats’ last-minute approach to reserving digital advertising spending for election years is a losing strategy long-term, the report warns.
According to the report, “the Right, especially Trump, recognized that persuasion is no longer about last-minute convincing, but about shaping beliefs continuously—building trust, shifting opinions, and staying visible through frequent engagement– just like commercial brand building.”
The next few election cycles are going to be shaped by a multitude of factors, including whether leaders in Washington are able to adequately control inflation and bring down the persistent rate of unemployment that skyrocketed under Joe Biden. There are serious questions about whether the right can hold onto the coalition of middle-class voters that elected President Trump in 2024, including record numbers of Hispanics, young people, and independent voters. Republicans are in a challenging position in 2026, facing sour economic sentiment and sitting as the party in power in Washington, a position that typically suffers in a mid-term cycle.
However, looking at the long-term prognosis for the conservative, America-First movement that seeks to reverse the disastrous results of decades of progressive policies like open borders, the mass importation of third-world labor, and the callous offshoring of U.S. jobs, there is hope. The mainstream news that had an iron-clad lock on the American people for the past century — a century that coincided with an erosion of American values and independence — has been largely destroyed. Digital media and the decentralization of news, culture, and commentary have certainly yielded some negatives, including predatory algorithms, undisclosed censorship aimed at favoring the mainstream narrative, and ideological pits where individuals consume only content they agree with. But on the aggregate, the collapse of top-down media, which functioned as a propaganda machine to produce disastrous results in the West, is one of the largest steps toward independence this century.
The rise of decentralized news and independent journalism has broken the United States out of years of propaganda designed to push a narrative that has stripped the country of its independence and self-sufficiency. The digital landscape favors those who expose what hasn’t worked and why, and offer alternatives, and right now that is conservative and independent voices.
Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
