The Rise of Independent Media — And Why the Powerful Are Terrified of It
Corporate media is collapsing under the weight of its own corruption. Something new is rising in its place. And this weekend, I’ll be in the middle of it.
Yesterday we basked in appreciation of you, our readers, for making possible the successful two-year anniversary of Let’s Address This. This weekend, I am attending two events that—if you had proposed them to me even five years ago—would have been dismissed as fantasy.
The first is Crooked Media’s unofficial White House Correspondents’ weekend event. The second is Substack’s New Media gathering. Both are bringing together independent journalists, writers, lawyers, advocates, and creators who have built audiences not through corporate backing or billionaire ownership, but through one radical proposition: earn the trust of the people, or lose everything.
These events could not have existed in any meaningful way five years ago. Today they are strengthening pillars of an entirely new media landscape—one that is rising directly from the rubble of a corporate media system that has catastrophically failed the American public. Let’s Address This.
The Collapse of Corporate Trust
The numbers tell the story with brutal clarity.
Gallup polling shows that trust in national media has collapsed to just 28%. Less than three in ten Americans trust the institutions that are supposed to keep them informed. That is not a polling blip. That is a civilizational warning signal.
And local media—historically the most trusted, most community-rooted form of journalism—has been decimated by 75% since the year 2002. The newsrooms that once covered city council meetings, school board decisions, local elections, and the stories that directly shaped people’s daily lives have been gutted, consolidated, or eliminated entirely.
Into that vacuum have stepped billionaires—purchasing media outlets not to inform the public, but to protect their interests, sanitize their reputations, and shape the information environment in ways that serve their bottom line. I have written about this in detail before. The pattern is unmistakable and the consequences are severe.
But something else has also stepped into that vacuum. Something the billionaires did not anticipate and cannot fully control.
Independent media.
What Independent Media Does That Corporate Media Cannot
The new civic media landscape—built on platforms like Substack, powered by direct reader support, and accountable to no one but the people who fund it—does three things that corporate media is structurally incapable of doing.
First: We are accountable to the people. Our entire model depends on earning the trust of working people—subscribers who choose, every single month or year, to invest in this work with their own money. We are not billionaire-owned. We cannot be bought. We cannot be pressured into silence by an advertiser, an owner, or a political donor. When we lose your trust, we lose everything. That is not a vulnerability. That is the most powerful accountability structure in civic media.
Second: Truth and facts are our product. Corporate media in Washington has increasingly become a vehicle for sanitizing genocide, cheerleading illegal wars, and functioning as a mouthpiece for state power. Their agenda is not to inform—it is to maintain access, protect relationships, and serve the interests of those who sign their checks. Our agenda is different. Facts matter here because our readers demand them and because our credibility depends entirely on delivering them.
Third: We don’t suffer from access bias. Corporate media in Washington has an incestuous relationship with elected officials that makes genuine accountability nearly impossible. Reporters who depend on access to powerful politicians cannot afford to hold those politicians accountable—because accountability costs access, and access is their currency. We have no such constraint. We hold everyone accountable. Including—and especially—the people who represent us.
I’m a visual learner so I want to give you an example of my third point. While a deeper story is forthcoming, I want to share a preview of something no corporate media outlet in Illinois has had the integrity to report.
The Story Corporate Media Won’t Tell You: Congressman Bill Foster and Kevin Warsh
In January, my current congressman—a corporate funded Democrat named Bill Foster—issued a press release announcing that he has an “open mind” about Donald Trump’s pick for Federal Reserve Chair, Kevin Warsh.
I want to walk you through exactly what that means—because there are at least four reasons why Foster’s position is not just indefensible, but genuinely disqualifying.
One: Kevin Warsh was one of the architects of the 2008 financial collapse—one of the most devastating economic catastrophes in modern American history, one that wiped out the savings, homes, and livelihoods of millions of working Americans. Bill Foster has an open mind about handing this man control of our national finances again.
Two: Kevin Warsh and his family have been among the driving forces behind Trump’s push to illegally annex Greenland—a brazen act of imperial aggression that violates international law and the sovereignty of an allied nation. Bill Foster has an open mind about elevating a man actively working to violently expand the American empire.
Three: When asked directly just this week in Senate confirmation hearings who won the 2020 presidential election, Kevin Warsh refused to confirm that Joe Biden won. In 2026, Bill Foster has an open mind about confirming an election denier to one of the most powerful economic positions in the world.
Four: As if the above three aren’t disqualifying enough, Kevin Warsh appears in the Epstein files more than 500 times. Five hundred times. In a child sex trafficking and abuse document. Bill Foster has an open mind about this man.
Let me be precise about what we are dealing with here. There are only two possible explanations—and both are disqualifying.
Option A: Bill Foster is so ignorant of his basic due diligence that he was unaware of any of the above. That is catastrophic incompetence from a sitting congressman.
Option B: Bill Foster knew all of the above—and simply does not care. That is moral complicity of the highest order.
Incompetence or complicity, Bill? Which one is it? Here’s the major problem. No corporate media outlet has bothered to ask or investigate this abdication of duty. This story deserved to be on the front page of every Illinois newspaper. It has appeared in none of them. That is the access bias problem in real time. And that is exactly why independent media like Let’s Address This exists and is growing.
This is why just this month we launched Launched Let’s Address Illinois with Dylan Blaha and Let’s Address Texas with Saadia Mirza. If you are in Illinois or Texas, I highly encourage you to subscribe to them (as always, no paywall).
One Tool That Keeps Us Honest: Ground News
Doing this work responsibly means not just holding others accountable—but also ourselves. Ground News helps us do so. In fact, Ground News has invested in independent media like Let’s Address This, and I am proud to accept their support precisely because of their commitment to transparency and accuracy. They are, like us, subscriber-supported—not billionaire-funded. Which means when you subscribe to Ground News, you are directly investing in the kind of media ecosystem that keeps power accountable.
Ground News is more than a news app. In an age of disinformation, algorithmic manipulation, and billionaire-owned outlets masquerading as objective journalism, Ground News is a critical tool for navigating the information landscape with clarity and precision. It aggregates related articles from across the political spectrum in one place, reveals the bias and factuality ratings of sources, cuts through partisanship and sensationalism to focus on verifiable facts, and—crucially—reports on who funds a media outlet. In 2026, that last piece of information is not optional. It is essential.
Right now, you can subscribe to Ground News at 40% off their Vantage Plan—the same plan I use—for just $5 a month. That is $5 a month to stop letting other people’s agendas control how you think.
Something New Is Rising
Here is what this Friday and Saturday represent to me—beyond just the events.
The White House Correspondents’ weekend has long symbolized much of what’s wrong with corporate media: a hall full of journalists and the politicians they are supposed to hold accountable, laughing, dining, and celebrating together—while the people those journalists are supposed to serve watch from the outside.
Independent media now has its own parallel gathering—its own community, its own ecosystem, its own weekend. This is not a footnote. It is a paradigm shift.
Twenty-eight percent of Americans trust national media. Seventy-five percent of local newsrooms are gone. Billionaires are buying up what remains. And in the space that corporate media has abandoned—the space where truth should live, where accountability should live, where the stories that powerful people don’t want told should live—independent media is building something new.
It is imperfect. It is still growing. It requires your support to survive and expand. But it is real, it is necessary, and it is working.
The powerful are not afraid of corporate media. Corporate media protects them. What they are afraid of is a reader-funded, paywall-free, people-accountable, and bias-free press that names them by name, cites the receipts, and cannot be bought into silence.
That is what we are building. That is what this weekend represents. And that is what your subscription to Let’s Address This makes possible. The story of our democracy is still being written. Independent media is one of the last institutions fighting to make sure it’s written honestly.
Stay with us. Share this. And let’s keep building.
Qasim Rashid is a human rights attorney, author, and host of Let’s Address This — a platform dedicated to human rights, accountability, and the independent journalism that corporate media refuses to deliver. Subscribe, share, and let’s remain relentless in our mission for a more perfect Union.
Thank you for what you do. I look to you for informed perspective.
Great article Qasim. ☮️