For starters, Independent content creators ARE the main stream media now. CNN's top show Anderson Cooper 360 gets roughly 700-900k views a month. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow gets 2-2.5 million views in their best month. Compare to Joe Rogan who gets 10-14 million downloads PER EPISODE on poscasts plus some Youtube shows get 40-50Million views. His monthly reach is estimated to be 200-400million views a month when factoring in various platforms. Tucker Carlson gets 5-10million downloads on podcast only and Lex Friedman gets 1-3million per episode plus 1mill+ youtube for each episode. Even further down the line still out grosses corporate tv. CNN is nearly always polled as the least trustworthy news source. 3/