Legacy Media: The Dying Dinosaurs of the Modern World

Can traditional outlets of news adapt before it's too late?

Source: Free Press International

For many decades, The Associated Press enjoyed its perch as the dominant media outlet in coverage of the White House.

In 2025, the AP has been relegated to getting its coverage of President Donald Trump from other sources.

Trump has essentially been the comet that has devastated the legacy media dinosaur, media analysts say.

“This is just kind of the death knell,” Russ Jones, a former journalist and now media consultant told The Washington Times.

“Three years is a long time to not have access to the leader of the free world, leaving them to rely on second- and third-party sources. I’m sure internally it’s been a really nasty hit financially and also with their own reputation.”

AP earned its demotion by refusing to adopt Trump’s “Gulf of America” terminology, insisting that its audience was global.

"That got AP booted from access to Air Force One, the Oval Office and other White House spaces where Trump held events," Jeff Mordock wrote for The Washington Times on July 20.

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Excerpt from Malibu Film Festival Best Documentary Winner: “Epidemic of Fraud”.

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The AP sued and won a brief reprieve after a federal judge ruled that the president unfairly retaliated against AP’s editorial decisions, but an appeals court largely blocked that ruling.

Now, AP is granted space in the rotating press pool.

"At first glance, Trump’s feud with AP might seem like a petty squabble, but it has drawn broader attention to what some critics say is a liberal bias," Mordock noted. "At the heart of the dispute is Trump’s mission to shred the outlet’s veneer as an independent, nonpartisan news source."

Tim Graham, a former White House reporter who is now director of media analysis for the Media Research Center, said: “In some ways, the AP did this to itself because, like many media institutions, they have just doubled down on their bias over the last few years. They talk a very big game about how awesome they are, but to a lot of people, they look like Democratic hacks.”

Graham said the AP has been reduced to hoping to outlast Trump and figure that his successor might return the outlet to its previous position.

“They’re going to be basically waiting for Trump to move out of the White House, and if we get a Democratic president, they’re back in their good graces,” Graham said. “And that gives them incentives to keep being Democrats because they think that is the way to save themselves. I don’t think the AP cares about what the public thinks of them because they are not acting in a way that says they care what the broad mass of Americans thinks. It’s like their reporters are writing for other reporters.”

Meanwhile, in the cable news realm, Fox News continues to dominate, maintaining its lead over NBC/MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN, with the network holding 99 of the top 100 cable news telecasts in the week of May 12, 2025.

"In comparison, MSNBC and CNN experienced significant declines in viewership, with MSNBC down twenty-nine percent in total viewers and forty percent in the key demographics in primetime, while CNN dropped sixteen percent in total viewers and eleven percent during primetime," Dr. Robert Malone noted in a July 19 analysis.

The faltering legacy cable outlets have been relying heavily on advertising from Big Pharma.

"Eventually, the Pharma Bucks that have been propping up the industry will decrease significantly, as cable TV News becomes increasingly irrelevant," Malone wrote.

Pharma ads accounted for nearly 25% of advertising minutes through May 2025 for all Major cable and broadcast networks (NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, and Fox News).

"For now, pharma advertising has not yet begun a mass pullout from cable TV news," Malone noted. "Still, the possibility now hangs over the industry. At present, cable news remains one of the few strongholds for pharma ad dollars, but this dominance is no longer assured. In fact, the Trump administration has indicated a clear intention to crack down on pharmaceutical advertising, particularly in the direct-to-consumer (DTC) segment, which is traditionally seen on television and other broadcast media."

Malone pointed to several developments in the industry:

• CBS has been purchased by conservative David Ellison, who has fired Stephen Colbert. David Ellison is an American film producer, former actor, and the founder and CEO of Skydance Media, a major entertainment company. He was born on January 9, 1983, in Santa Clara County, California, and is the son of Oracle Corporation co-founder Larry Ellison and Barbara Boothe Ellison.

• All government funding for PBS and NPR, including their local affiliates, has been eliminated by recent Congressional votes. Trump has not yet signed the rescissions package into law, but it has been sent to his desk for signature after final passage by Congress. This will lead to a significant reduction in local programming; however, it is believed that national programming will survive due to other revenue streams.

• NBC/MSNBC are being spun out from Comcast. Mark Lazarus is the incoming CEO of Versant, the soon-to-be publicly traded company spun off from NBC Universal. Versant (formerly SpinCo) will now be operationally above MSNBC. Versant’s new boss, Lazarus, has indicated in private communications that he believes the public perception of MSNBC is that Republicans cannot get a fair shake from the network. He wants to change that (4), and he has suggested the network should offer more balanced viewpoints. However, the current CEO of MSNBC is still very progressive. So, time will tell what influence Lazarus will have on MSNBC programming.

• CNN is being spun off as a separate company from Warner Bros./Discovery’s streaming/studio assets. CNN is now undergoing major staff layoffs and has already introduced sweeping programming changes for 2025. However, whether CNN will shift to the center-right is anyone’s guess.

• In June 2025, The Washington Post, under the guidance of Jeff Bezos, named Adam O'Neal, former Washington correspondent at The Economist, as its new head of opinion content. O'Neal emphasized a philosophy of optimism and focus on personal freedom and free markets, echoing Bezos' vision.

• The Los Angeles Times' editorial stance has undergone a dramatic change in late 2024 and 2025 under the ownership of Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong. The most significant developments include a shift toward “Fair and Balanced” and the firing and restructuring of the entire editorial board. The LA Times, under Soon-Shioung has indicated that there will be an explicit shift to feature conservative, centrist, and liberal voices. Soon-Shiong has also expressed a desire to increase conservative voices in the Times’ opinion section, citing concerns the publication had become an “echo chamber” for the political left (5)

Malone concluded:

Most mainstream media outlets recognize that audience capture is what will keep this industry alive. As there is a more conservative mood among the general populace, slowly but surely, mainstream media is being forced to keep up. People do not want to hear a one-sided, progressive primordial scream coming from their TVs. If they don’t change their overtly socialist, DEI stances, they will continue to wither. Likewise, seamlessly melding cable networks with streaming services will be the future of the industry. But that again requires liberal voices to be quelled, as they do not represent the center field, let alone the conservative voice. Without relevancy, cable news is a dying dinosaur and will be replaced. The king is starving and on his last legs: long live the new king - alternative media.