Conservatives like to gloat when legacy media outlets lay off journalists or, better yet, shut their doors for good. The Right claims that Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, now X, was a turning point for free speech and will forever change how voters get their news, but the death of the corporate press may have been greatly exaggerated. 

To be fair, this election will test the power of the press. We are about to find out if former President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory over corporate media’s candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was an aberration or if it was the beginning of the end for the Democratic Party’s Praetorian Guard.