Donald Trump's populist victory in 2016 rang alarm bells for US journalism. In an election enveloped in a miasma of misinformation, not only had Trump succeeded in making a foil out of the supposedly ‘fake’ news media, it seemed to many in the aftermath that truth and facts didn't matter much at all. Arguments about a ‘post-truth’ era in which facts are fluid or ‘alternative’ gained new currency.
In the aftermath, journalists and journalism experts initiated an intense round of reassessment about what journalism means and what it should do. Op-eds and academic articles abounded and the discussion came to dominate the end-of-year series of expert and industry ‘predictions’ for journalism published on the Nieman Journalism Lab website, published by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard.
The NiemanLab predictions are examples of what Vos and Thomas (2018) refer to as journalism's ‘discursive construction’ — the crosscurrents of conversation and exchanges of ideas about what journalism is and what it should be which continually construct and reconstruct the field as an ‘institution’. Carlson (2016) argues this ‘metajournalistic discourse’ polices and challenges the boundaries of journalism, simultaneously including and excluding certain ideals and practices while negotiating the legitimacy to the field, something that seemed in doubt in the aftermath of Trump's first victory.
The doubt only deepened after Trump's 2024 re-election. This time, with both the Electoral College and the popular vote firmly on his side, Trump proved his first term was no fluke. Predictably, Trump 2.0 dominated NiemanLab's end-of-year predictions, providing the opportunity to see whether and how the resurgence of a form of populism, perhaps more enduring than first thought, is taken onboard by journalism professionals and experts. This chapter compares the perspectives of prominent US journalism experts and industry professionals in 2016 and in 2024, as expressed in these end-of-year predictions.
If journalism's discursive construction in 2016 largely focussed on external factors, such as waves of misinformation and declining trust in the media, in 2024, it turned sharply inward to heightened concerns for the continued existence of traditional, mainstream, professional journalistic ideals and practices. Journalistic discourse appeared to enter a crisis mode and, in the process, it became less than clear whether the same old boundaries could be policed and whether such policing was capable of maintaining the legitimacy of mainstream journalism.
2016: Trust, audiences, and misinformation
Following the White House victory of a man with a tenuous connection to facts, journalism's discursive construction in 2016 foregrounded the challenge of responding to an era in which abundant misinformation weighs heavily on the public's capacity to separate truth from falsehood. In his end-of-year NiemanLab prediction, Waite (2016) concisely summed up the main currents of this discourse as three questions: “How do we restore trust in media? How do we reach Middle America? What do we do about fake news?” Waite predicted leaders of US news organisations would not address these problems because they didn't believe themselves to be ‘the problem’ and therefore were not hiring leaders with new and diverse ideas about how journalism is done in the digital era.
Despite broad agreement on overarching concerns about trust, audiences and misinformation, the experts answered those three questions in diverse ways. Showing how deeply entangled these issues are, Tofel (2016) noted many people voted for Trump despite their distrust of the candidate, indicating they actually may have taken on board critical press coverage of his campaign but just didn't care. Perhaps finding a silver lining, Tofel argued ‘our fellow citizens are still listening to us as journalists’ and journalists should remain dedicated to telling the truth about Trump.
Still others criticised a type of journalism they felt was out of touch with Trump supporters by either ignoring them or depicting them as ignorant or hateful (Meehan, 2016; Schallom, 2016). This sense of disconnection, tinged with perceptions of snobbish, journalistic elites who, rather than inclusively covering a vast and diverse country, remain comfortably housed in coastal bubbles, spurred calls to ‘listen more deeply to the people of this country with genuine curiosity and without preconception’ (Walker, 2016).
Yet by far the biggest concern in these discursive crosscurrents was the flood of misinformation during the 2016 presidential campaign — ‘fake news’ — which seemed to tear at the very foundations of democracy and journalism's role within. Seen as journalism's ‘arch nemesis’ and a symptom of a ‘crisis in the cultural authority of knowledge,’ misinformation became an emblem of the challenges a ‘post-truth’ era poses to journalism and other institutions which stake their authority on a dedication to the truth (Boczkowski, 2016; Reissmann, 2016).
Experts urged an increased focus on fact-checking and verification (Reissmann, 2016; Wardle, 2016). By doubling down on journalism's truth-seeking mission, this discourse reinforced the foundations of the profession while acknowledging a need to be more transparent about how facts are gathered (Sullivan, 2016). Improvements in ‘news literacy’ among audiences, aided by verification and fact-checking were seen as helping to mitigate the impact of misinformation (Lowe, 2016).
Finally, some experts pointed to the need to rethink matters of media economics, arguing social media and technology platforms should be used to create connections to communities ‘left behind as small newspapers closed’ rather than for the ‘hot pursuit of elusive clicks and eyeball economics’ (Papacharissi, 2016). Others suggested treating journalism as something ‘worthy of our support and protection and not a commercial product in search of a business model’ (Snyder, 2016).
2024: Mainstream journalism's existential crisis
Unseated in 2020 and seeking revenge in 2024, Trump's second run at re-election featured more populist grievance, misinformation and cries of ‘fake news’. After his resounding win and on the eve of Trump 2.0, journalism's discursive construction continued many of the threads from 2016 but with signs of deepening existential dread for the profession. Concerns for misinformation persisted, again feeding into predictions and recommendations regarding journalism's role as an essential fact- gathering and verification backstop for democracy. Kaiser (2024) pointed out when journalism aims to provide audiences with what they want rather than what they need, journalism emphasises sensational facts rather than substantive but often banal coverage crucial for healthy democracies, such as reportage on the complexities of policy processes and social problems.
Defences of journalistic truth-seeking also reflected burgeoning changes in the US media system, in part related to the rise of online influencers, podcasts, and other forms of information dissemination testing the boundaries of journalism. Massey (2024) underscored journalism's obligation to serve the public by prioritising ‘community trust and factual accuracy,’ noting journalism's role as a Fourth Estate watchdog and defender of democracy sets it apart from ‘influencers, haters, and imitators’ who are ‘not like us’.
However, if there was a dominant undercurrent in journalism's discursive construction on the eve of Trump 2.0, it was the anxiety that mainstream journalism — at least as it has traditionally been practiced — no longer matters. Certainly, journalism's legitimacy seemed in doubt in 2016, but eight years later a fear for the very existence of professional journalism produced what might be viewed as a discursive crisis over what journalism should look like. Discursive construction increasingly appeared more like discursive reconstruction. Thus, while journalism continued to reassert its distinctiveness, thereby discursively constructing a professional boundary, it also increasingly acknowledged a need for fundamental change.
In her prediction “the mainstream media will lose its last grip on relevancy,” Marwick (2024) raised the spectre of a deeply fragmented media ecosystem with mainstream media in continued decline and partisan social media influencers on the rise. Marwick suggested as these trends progressed, US voters would become more divided between those getting their news from professional sources dedicated to ethics and objectivity and people getting something resembling news from influencers pushing populist messages, disinformation, and spin.
Proffered solutions included new visions of what professional journalism means, as well as looking beyond, if not entirely abandoning, the field's boundaries. Lichfield (2024) suggested it was time for an ‘activist’ press willing to ‘agitate for democracy’ by providing inspiring ideas which empower people to act. Others predicted the blurring of boundaries between influencers and journalists (Maddox, 2024) and urged the profession to engage with ‘informal news networks’ of citizens who share vital information relevant to daily lives (Chaplin, 2024). Successfully navigating such boundary-defying changes requires bridging ‘the gap between the institutional framework of mainstream media and the dynamism of independent journalism’ (Kaminska, 2024), as well as thinking ‘across disciplines: technology platforms, youth trends, global public health, and civic institutions’ (Mina, 2024).
Perhaps summing up these prevalent strains of collaborative and networked thinking about and beyond mainstream journalism, Brown (2024) argued ‘the Fourth Estate has failed’ and to rebuild, US journalism must ‘prioritise mutual aid and collaboration with people in other fields who have expertise in listening, organising, and, most importantly, belonging’.
The populist reshaping of journalism
The comparison of US journalism's discursive construction in 2016 to 2024 shows the need to think together media and political systems, as changes in one ripple out to the other. At a cultural and institutional level, journalistic discourses at both points in time responded to many of the critiques of elite institutions which Trump rode to victory in both 2016 and 2024. Seen as out of touch with audiences in an era when truth and facts seem to matter little, if at all, US journalism urged change in its practices, norms and organisational structures. However, it remained less than clear how such change would be achieved.
Among the predictions for change in 2016 and 2024, ideas and cultures were in abundance but the structural foundations of journalism seemed a tougher nut to crack. Experts noted US democracy's need for high-quality, community-focussed journalism produced as a public good rather than as a commercial commodity, suggesting public or nonprofit / philanthropic funding could provide at least partial answers to a fragmented and polarised media system (Hoffman, 2024; Snyder, 2016). ‘Audience-driven’ business models, fuelled by clicks and algorithms rather than by editorial judgment, were viewed as an obstacle to producing substantial, essential news for democratic publics (Kaiser, 2024). Yet at the same time — and again demonstrating how changes in political systems rebound on journalism's discursive construction — Trump's authoritarian tendencies fuelled doubt about public-funded options for journalism's reconstruction, as a ‘BBC-like national journalism operation’ under Trump ‘might be frightening’ (Snyder, 2016).
If there is a crisis in US journalism in an era of Trump-style populism, it is simultaneously discursive, cultural, and structural. All of these things matter. The exchange of ideas about what journalism is and for, the professional cultures which produce and sustain the values and practices of journalism, and the organisational, economic, legal and political structures which produce certain affordances and constraints on news production. From the earliest days of Trump's second term, an avalanche of executive decisions and power grabs — massive layoffs and shutdowns at federal agencies, immigration crackdowns, and brewing showdowns with the judiciary — began stress-testing these ideas, cultures, and structures, potentially even ‘breaking down’ US democracy itself (Levitsky and Way, 2025). No doubt, these upheavals in US government and politics will continue to shape the discursive (re)construction of journalism in the populist era.
This article is an abridged version of a chapter from the new book, ‘Pandering to populism? Journalism and politics in a post-truth age’, edited by John Mair, Tor Clark, Neil Fowler, Raymond Snoddy and Richard Tait, published by Bite-Sized Books. Available on Amazon.
