“Phones are completely bogged down hearing from students, young adults, adults, and business owners who are all concerned at the option of losing their access to the [TikTok] platform,” explained a senior Republican Party aide in March. The phone calls were from angry social media users expressing their dismay that the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would force the social media platform TikTok to be sold or banned in the United States. That bill stalled in the Senate, but a new ban was tucked into a foreign aid bill that President Joe Biden signed in April.
YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok are rapidly replacing legacy media as popular news sources for many social media users, but X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and Reddit remain the favorites. The term legacy media refers to pre-digital news media outlets such as print and broadcast news. Since 2019, the number of people who cite social media as their number one source for news has increased by 50 percent. During that same time, the number of Americans who cite television news as their preferred source for news has declined from 31 to 25 percent. Half of American adults report that they access their news from social media sometimes or often. For Americans under the age of thirty-four, social media is the number one source for news.
Although supporters of the bill to ban TikTok justify it as a way to protect national security and the mental health of young people, as other commentators have noted, supporters of the ban have ulterior motives. The ban serves the interests of both Republican and the Democratic presidential candidates as it seeks to minimize and eradicate some of the digital content and narratives that compete and undermine the bipartisan legacy media’s establishment narratives.
It was no secret during the Trump presidency that he spent a great deal of time watching cable news. Indeed, Bloomberg reported that Donald Trump spent each day consuming hours of live and recorded cable news. Trump watched Fox News so often that it was common for him to live tweet with their hosts.
This live-tweeting illustrated the symbiotic relationship between Fox’s coverage and Trump’s perspective. A Media Matters study found that Trump live-tweeted with Fox 1,146 times over a two-year period. In a particularly egregious example in 2018, as Fox News was ratcheting up fears that North Korea might consider a nuclear attack on the United States, Trump responded via Twitter that the U.S. “Nuclear Button” was “much bigger & more powerful” than North Korea’s.
Given their laudatory coverage of Trump and Republican Party slant, it is not surprising that his favorite cable news channel was Fox News. A Harvard University study found that in Trump’s first 100 days in office, Fox gave him more favorable coverage when compared to other news outlets. In addition to favorable coverage, Fox acted as a campaign arm of the Trump Administration. They dedicated extended coverage to his rallies, so much so that Trump was frequently in conversation with Fox News host Sean Hannity, both privately and on-air, about policy and media issues. In fact, Hannity and other Fox personalities literally campaigned with Trump. Fox News doctored evidence to benefit his campaign, including cropping Trump from a photo they broadcast of Melania Trump standing with convicted sex offenders Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
The relationship with the former President proved so lucrative that, after his loss in November 2020, Fox repeatedly hosted people who claimed Trump had won that election because their conservative audience wanted it to be true, even though Fox hosts knew the opposite was the case. By the time the discrepancy between these Fox personalities’ public and private views on the 2020 presidential election was exposed in court in 2023, Fox’s coverage of Trump had become more critical. But, in 2024, with the threat of another four years of a Democrat in the White House, Fox has come around to supporting Trump yet again. In fact, a Fox correspondent admitted, “Fox critics love to say Trump is the monster we created, OK, but we say it to ourselves, too. We know it’s true.”
President Joe Biden has maintained a similarly close relationship with cable news networks CNN and MSNBC both of which display a Democratic Party slant. For example, while he was still campaigning for the presidency in 2020, Biden hired MSNBC contributor and historian Jon Meacham to be his speech writer. At the time, CNN and MSNBC aided Biden by ignoring or dismissing his main competitor in the primary—U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Indeed, it was common for these cable news outlets to erase Sanders from polling graphics or incorrectly place him in a worse polling position. Similarly, in the general election, MSNBC’s coverage, like that of other liberal outlets, was overwhelmingly positive about Biden and negative about Trump.
Since 2019, the number of people who cite social media as their number one source for news has increased by 50 percent.
After Biden’s Inauguration, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow admitted crying tears of joy when he assumed the presidency. Meanwhile, Joy Reid of MSNBC exclaimed that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris “gave us hope.” Despite the fact that Biden had yet to serve a full day in office, NBC News anchor Chuck Todd declared that “He is the better angel President. Joe Biden is eternally optimistic, he’s not cynical . . . . He still thinks the better angels exist.”
As President, Biden has maintained a close relationship with his cable news allies. His favorite news program is Morning Joe. Indeed, sources report that Biden often calls Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough—a former Republican Congressmember made famous for his critiques of Trump—to discuss news stories. Sometimes, Biden even vents about media coverage. Similarly, in May 2022, MSNBC hired his former press secretary, Jen Psaki, to be an on-air personality. MSNBC’s hosts welcomed the hire. However in 2024, to Biden’s advantage, they opposed NBC, their parent company, hiring the former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel. The on-air protest from MSNBC staff eventually led to McDaniel being fired a mere four days after being hired.
In addition to hiring Biden-friendly personalities, MSNBC has also skewed its coverage to defend Biden. For example, when Biden and Trump held dueling press conferences in 2024 about the U.S./Mexico border, MSNBC chose not to air Trump’s comments and largely focused on lauding Biden instead. Also in 2024, when The New York Times noted that Biden’s declarations about the economy, taxes, and jobs were often a combination of statements that were “false,” “misleading,” and in need of “context,” MSNBC’s Claire McCaskill, a former Democratic U.S. Senator, called it “ridiculous that The New York Times fact-check Joe Biden.”
In addition to defending Biden, MSNBC also spends a fair amount of time constructing a positive historical legacy for the current President. In February, MSNBC hosted a discussion of a new survey by presidential historians. The survey placed Biden as the fourteenth greatest President of all time, while Donald Trump placed last.
The candidates’ preference for cable news outlets gives them a different perception of reality than the electorate they seek to represent. Indeed, research shows that those who consume digital media often have a different worldview than those who rely on legacy media. This divide was painfully obvious during the COVID-19 pandemic, when social media users were less informed about COVID-19 than legacy news audiences.
Even when social and legacy media audiences were focused on the same topic, they were having different conversations. For example, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, legacy media largely dismissed the so-called lab leak theory—which claimed that COVID-19 started in a Chinese virology lab—as racist and baseless propaganda. Meanwhile, on social media, the lab leak theory was treated as a legitimate issue for debate. As a result, those who primarily get their news from social media, disproportionately young people, were more likely to conclude that the lab leak theory was a legitimate explanation for the origin of the virus. This frustrated both legacy media and government officials, who sought to pressure social media platforms to suppress lab-leak content. That is, until two years into Biden’s presidency, when cable news reversed course and joined the social media conversation after some federal agencies—including the Department of Energy and the FBI—concluded that the lab leak theory was indeed plausible.
More recently, the Israeli assault on Gaza has exposed the divide between legacy news and digital audiences. Israel’s assault on Gaza was a response to a violent attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023. Polls show that those who are more likely to depend on social media for their news (young people) are more suspicious of Israel’s motives in Gaza. This divide is due in part to the fact that legacy news media have attenuated their coverage to echo both Biden and Trump’s commitment to supporting Israel. For example, CNN filtered its reporting through its Jerusalem bureau before it reached American audiences; MSNBC removed personalities who were sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians; and The New York Times published a disputed report that Hamas committed sexual assaults and rape during the October 7 attacks. Under pressure to substantiate its sensational reporting, the Times later said it could not corroborate those claims.
Even when social and legacy media audiences were focused on the same topic, they were having different conversations.
Compared to legacy media, social media has allowed room for criticism of Israel. In fact, a month into the Israeli strikes in Gaza, analysts pointed out that, on TikTok in particular, Israel was losing the information war. On social media, users had access to posts that purported to show Israeli soldiers committing human rights abuses and killing unarmed hostages, the ongoing humanitarian crisis for Palestinians, Israeli influencers mocking Palestinian suffering, and Islamophobic comments by U.S. officials.
These competing perspectives divided the electorate as social media users came to understand the conflict as an unfolding genocide, while most legacy media audiences view Israel’s violence as a justified defense against terrorist attacks. When such divides bubbled up previously, U.S. lawmakers relied on points of leverage—such as raising taxes, restricting access to lucrative government contracts, or increasing regulation—to pressure social media platforms to suppress information. However, TikTok is not owned by a U.S. company, which makes it more difficult to control.
Similar to the Red Scare tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, elected officials, during media appearances, argue without evidence that the social media users who support Palestinians are puppets of a Russian plot. This official response has been aided by numerous legacy news media stories dismissing Palestinian supporters’ perspectives as ignorant.
Meanwhile, polls show that social media users have not been swayed. Young people, a key constituent of the Democratic Party, are abandoning Biden and instead refusing to vote at all, threatening to vote for Trump, or considering voting for a third-party candidate. In a particularly striking example of opposition to Biden, during the 2024 Democratic primaries, thousands of registered Democrats voted “uncommitted” instead of for Biden. Similarly, in late March, his star-studded fundraiser in New York City with musician Lizzo, late-night comedian Stephen Colbert, and former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, which raised $25 million for his re-election campaign, was repeatedly interrupted by protesters calling for Biden to end his support for Israel. The ire from his onetime supporters has also resulted in the Biden campaign canceling appearances on several college campuses to avoid facing protesters from within his own party.
A 2024 poll reveals that a quarter of Americans, roughly the same amount who depend on television for their news, blame social media, more than other media, for so-called fake news.
In April, Biden pivoted from his unquestioning support of Israel and began to rhetorically pressure Israel to minimize civilian casualties and allow more aid into Gaza. The shift appeared to have less to do with the critiques on social media and more to do with the murder of humanitarian aid workers from World Central Kitchen by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés has strong personal connections to the Democratic Party, has worked with the support of the Biden Administration on Ukraine relief, and has appeared often in legacy media. As many social media users can attest, the indiscriminate killing of civilians, humanitarians, and journalists has been a common occurrence during the Israel-Hamas war. However, after these particular murders, which the IDF admitted were wrong, a shift started. One has to wonder how different the world could have been if Biden and the legacy news media had refused to tolerate such killings months earlier.
The rhetorical shift on Israel—just as with COVID-19 before it—illustrates that American democracy does not need more censorship of platforms; it needs better journalism in the public interest. Indeed, just like legacy media, social media platforms such as TikTok offer a combination of factual information and outright disinformation.
The public does not need to be limited to which information—true or not—that it accesses. What Americans and the global community need are U.S. leaders who let the facts, not corporate media propaganda, inform their behaviors and attitudes.