If there was any doubt that corporate media is threatened by Elon Musk telling X users that “You are the media now” Axios CEO Jim VandeHei’s impassioned outburst at the National Press Club gala puts the matter to rest.

VandeHei railed about how the work of legacy media matters, saying “everything we do is under fire” in an attempt to defend a dying media whose narratives are being effectively challenged and countered by alternative media like X and podcasts.

Musk has made numerous comments on the growing influence of citizen journalists and fact checkers who are sharing what they see, hear and know on his X platform where bad or incomplete information can be quickly corrected via the community notes feature.

Meanwhile, corporate media propagandists have lost credibility and audience because they have failed to be impartial in reporting on issues like Russian collusion, Covid and Ukraine.

That bias has led information seekers to other outlets to get timely and credible information and has tipped public support away from corporate platforms.

By appearing  on podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, President-elect Donald Trump not only gained access to an audience many times larger than what any corporate media program could attract but he also was able to bypass the narrative managers who have attacked him nonstop since 2015.

VandeHei’s National Press Club outburst claimed that “Being a reporter is really hard,” adding, “You don’t do that by popping off on Twitter. You don’t do that by having an opinion. You do it by doing the hard work.”

If the legacy media wants to be credible again, it’s going to have to the actual hard work of winning back the trust of the public, it can’t just demand our respect.