Communicators Should Take Note of How the Rapid-fire President and a Fractured Media Landscape Have Flipped the Script
February 17, 2025 – – If you’re still watching network television news programs or reading publications like The New York Times or Washington Post, you may have detected bewilderment, even panic in these outlets’ reporting. Journalists appear to be in crisis mode, overwhelmed by the unprecedented volume and pace of President Trump’s provocative orders, actions and pronouncements.
Sure, some of the frustration we’re witnessing can be explained by reporters’ disdain for Trump and his MAGA movement. But what’s adding to their angst is the realization that they’ve lost a super power they possessed for generations. Mass media is no longer the primary gatekeeper of our nation’s news.
Enabled by fractured digital news channels and social media platforms, Donald J. Trump is kryptonite to the legacy news media.
Mass Media’s Historic Agenda-Setting Power
Since the advent of television, journalism and political science researchers have studied what they call the “agenda-setting role of mass media.” University of Texas at Austin Professor Maxwell McCombs, author of “The Agenda-Setting Role of the Mass Media in the Shaping of Public Opinion,” describes the phenomenon:
“The power of the news media to set a nation’s agenda to focus public attention on a few key public issues is an immense and well-documented influence. Not only do people acquire factual information about public affairs from the news media, readers and viewers also learn how much importance to attach to a topic on the basis of the emphasis placed on it in the news.”
Communications professor Stanley J. Baran, one of the first to advance the agenda-setting theory, puts it more succinctly:
“Mass media doesn’t tell you what to think, but it tells you what to think about.”
Not so much anymore.
How Trump Has Flipped the Script
The Trump administration is obliterating news cycles and “telling us what to think about” by directing our attention to new topics hour by hour. In the last few weeks, we’ve wondered for the first time in a long time about the strategic importance of Greenland and the Panama Canal, pondered the future of Gaza as a seaside resort destination, reexamined diversity and gender identity, analyzed the role of tariffs and humanitarian aid in our foreign policy, learned that it costs us more than three cents to make a penny, and watched Google Maps rename the Gulf of Mexico.
In a reversal of roles, reporters are scrambling to keep up with Trump’s agenda. They can’t turn down the volume or silence any of his fleeting priorities. Just as their fact-checking begins, another issue takes center stage.
Mass Media Has Lost Control
In the first chapter of “The Crisis Preparedness Quotient,” we discuss the circumstances that define a crisis. First on the list is loss of control.
For the last half of the 20th century, mass media was solidly in control. America’s news agenda was set by three television networks whose evening news broadcasts were seen by a majority of households every night. In the 1960s and ‘70s, Walter Cronkite on CBS alone reached 30 million people. For comparison, Nielsen Media Research reports that today’s average audience for the NBC, ABC and CBS evening news broadcasts combined is just under 18 million.
Mass media is losing control as the media landscape continues to change. According to Pew Research Center‘s “News Platform Fact Sheet,” 58% of U.S. adults prefer getting their news from digital devices, followed by television (32%), radio (6%) and print publications (4%).
The most popular digital news sources include news websites or apps (66%), search (66%), social media (54%) and podcasts (27%). The Joe Rogan Experience podcast is the most listened-to podcast in the U.S., with 14.5 million Spotify followers and 17.9 million YouTube subscribers.
The Lessons of Role Reversal
There are lessons for corporate communicators and crisis counselors in this seismic shift of power. As President of the United States, Donald Trump has far greater capability to set the news agenda than any CEO or celebrity. But his strategies are applicable to anyone wishing to communicate effectively in today’s fractured media environment:
- Add digital news channels and formats to your primary media target list, building relationships with these new voices. (“New media” outlets are now included in White House press briefings.)
- Pay special attention to improving your Google footprint; what reporters and the public find when they search for you online. (Create compelling content on your own website and social media platforms unfiltered by traditional news media.)
- And when you find yourself in a crisis, aggressively advance your agenda by focusing on what you want to talk about. (Being featured on “60 Minutes” is no longer a death sentence if you can tell your story through the new communication channels that reach and influence far larger audiences.)
Watching mass media news outlets cover Washington in the coming months will be interesting and instructive. Finding the best way to contribute to our understanding of what’s going on without being able to set the agenda will be important not only to these platforms’ survival, but to our nation’s future. The press may no longer be all-powerful gatekeepers, but they still play a critical role in our democracy.
I’ve got to go. President Trump is about to hold another press conference and sign a few executive orders.
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/news-platform-fact-sheet/
Crisis Quotient Blog 