One-sided and often dishonest reporting on issues related to the Second Amendment is just one reason for the cratering of trust in today’s media. To put this in context, in 2025, a long-running Gallup poll on U.S. public trust in mass media found that 28% of citizens, a record low, said they trust the media. The public trust in the media, according to this poll, was as high as 54% in 2003, but has been deteriorating ever since.
Given how turned off the public is, what is the future of the news media, and is there any chance market forces could make its treatment of this individual right fairer?
As these are big, complicated and evolving questions, let’s break this down into seven things to watch on the future of journalism as it relates to our right to keep and bear arms.
1. Artificial Intelligence (AI): Many newsrooms are now leaning into AI to create greater scale and efficiency. Some are even calling those who use AI writing to create stories “AI-assisted reporters.” Some reports say that AI-assisted reporters are responsible for up to 30 stories per day. Basically, AI scours other news sites and even social media and suggests topics. It then manages drafts, selects images, tags content and generates social-media posts. This lowers overhead, but it can make writing less unique and ideas even more uniform as anti-gun media outlets chase each other’s tails.
Indeed, AI engines often look for consensus from other “mainstream” outlets, which tend to be anti-gun. This ideology can then get multiplied by an AI engine and pushed out everywhere. This is both a worry and an evolving reality; however, competition is now quickly evolving in the AI marketplace, and not all of the content each AI algorithm is scraping is anti-gun.
Meanwhile, AI is already very dominant. By some estimates, the majority of content being produced on the internet is already created by AI. TikTok has reported that its platform already hosts more than one billion AI-generated videos. The fear is that human-generated, verified content will soon be drowned out by machine-made “AI slop,” and that some percentage of this ideological soup could be used to turn people against their right to keep and bear arms.
2. Social-Media Bias: When Elon Musk bought Twitter and transformed it into X, he struck a huge blow for freedom. Pro-freedom individuals were suddenly no longer being shadow banned or cancelled simply because they support the law-abiding citizens’ right to keep and bear arms. This competition has placed pressure on other social-media giants not to censor. This change also presents more avenues for pro-Second Amendment candidates to reach voters without going through often anti-gun mainstream-media filters.
3. Deep fakes: AI-generated photos and videos are mostly fun and games, but they can be used to “show” things that are not true. Fake videos and images have already been used to sway public opinion in the aftermath of shootings and other tragedies. Software designed to spot and label them, however, is well under way. A few examples include io, DuckDuckGoose AI Detector and Attestiv Video Platform, but none of these are perfect. This is an evolving technological battle.
4. Subject Matter Experts: Your NRA titles, such as A1F.com, NRAWomen.com, AmericanHunter.org and AmericanRifleman.org, are good examples of subject-matter experts stepping into areas the mainstream media either does not touch, is politically opposed to or does not have the expertise to report on. This is part of the massive diversification the internet has allowed. The mainstream media often treats this as a dangerous thing, as it is disrupting their reach and power to influence. The media often points out that people are being divided into subgroups that only reinforce their beliefs. That is certainly something to watch for, but why shouldn’t someone who is, say, interested in concealed carry, look for publications that review guns, teach skills and point to resources such as NRAInstructors.org? This diversification is very likely to continue, though it could be hampered if platforms, such as YouTube, further decide to get in the way by demonetizing or even banning sites that are talking about legal, constitutionally protected activities.
5. The New Creators: The rise of the YouTube or TikTok star is and has been shocking the establishment. Podcasters, substackers and more have massively eaten into the audiences that once solely consumed mainstream-news publications. Big media, however, is looking for ways to retake this ground; for example, TheWashington Post’s Ripple project is scheduled to begin this year. It will reportedly offer writers, such as independent substackers, opportunities to publish on its website and app. This content will be separated from the existing Post articles, but it will offer these individuals a bigger audience. Given the Post’s politics, it doesn’t seem likely that they’ll offer this promotion to John Lott or Hickok45; instead, this could corporatize and, with soft pressure (if you want to keep access to this audience, be careful!), enable the mainstream media to control more of the market.
6. The fall of the credentialled journalist: In early 2025, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the White House—rather than the White House Correspondents’ Association—would decide which news organizations and reporters make up thepress pool that covers the president. The Trump administration has also allowed “new media”—including social-media influencers, podcasters and other independent content creators—to have seats in briefings and events. This has driven the credentialed-journalist class mad. As reporters from the mainstream-news outlets are more likely to be anti-Second Amendment, this change makes it more likely that at least a few media members in the room will be somewhat in touch with America’s 100 million-plus gun owners.
7. Community reporting: With the big newspapers, such as The New York Times, the subscription model is again becoming king. As previously reported, Big Tech companies are now devouring the majority of ad revenue. But, in local communities, a lot of things are now being tried. One problem is that, in the U.S., zombie local news websites—those in which AI is simply regenerating content and posting it to a website and on social media—now outnumber real local websites, according to Newsguard.
Meanwhile, some platforms are looking for ways to identify and promote creators they think produce quality content and to downgrade those they think produce unreliable content. This could be another tool for anti-Second Amendment individuals in Big Tech to again put their thumb on the scale to sway public opinion against our Second Amendment-protected rights.
As media outlets meet a new future, these are just some of the market changes legacy media outlets are responding to as they compete or perhaps fade away. The future of reporting on issues related to our freedom is not certain, but then, it never has been.
