To win a public debate, you must confront a harsh reality: we face a simultaneous crisis of trust in legacy media and a crisis of distribution driven by cord cutting, writes Drive Public Affairs’ Josh Riggs.

For decades, the formula for public affairs was straightforward: if you could get your policy point on the front page of a major newspaper or on a nightly news broadcast, you won. Today? That strategy is a recipe for failure.

At a digital-first public affairs firm, I see the evidence every day. If you are serious about communicating an issue, influencing policy or winning a public debate, you must confront a harsh reality: we are living through a simultaneous crisis of trust and distribution. The traditional avenues of influence are fundamentally broken. Digital strategy is not an add-on. It’s the only viable communications channel remaining.

The first part of this crisis is the collapsing public confidence in legacy media. Recent Gallup polling shows that confidence in the mass media — newspapers, TV and radio — to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly” has fallen to a historic low of just 28% of Americans, dipping below 30% for the first time. Even more telling, seven in 10 U.S. adults express either “not very much” confidence or “none at all” in the press.

This deficit is not evenly distributed; it is most pronounced among the young and politically active — the very audiences whose votes and engagement are critical to any policy campaign. With trust levels among young adults (ages 18 to 29) hovering far below older generations, relying on a national broadcast to set the narrative is simply preaching to an ever-shrinking, and increasingly older, choir.

The second part of the crisis is distribution, exemplified by the relentless phenomenon of cord cutting. By 2024, an estimated 73.2 million U.S. households, a vast majority of the nation, have moved to non-pay TV status, either cutting the cord or never subscribing in the first place.

This explosion of choice means audiences are no longer concentrated; they are scattered across thousands of streaming apps, niche podcasts, and social media feeds, each offering specialized content. The distribution problem is not just that people are leaving cable; it’s that the mass audience has disintegrated. If a Gen Z constituent is getting their news from a gaming channel on Twitch and watching entertainment on five different streaming services, the ad buy on cable news is irrelevant.

“Digital-first” is more than a marketing slogan; it is a mandate. Digital engagement bypasses the trust deficit and solves the distribution crisis by meeting audiences where they already are: on social platforms and targeted content feeds.

The path to policy influence is no longer about lobbying a handful of editorial boards, but leveraging data to reach 10,000 specific, engaged stakeholders in key districts directly, where they already are. Digital advertising capabilities, like connected TV, online video and display, allow for targeting that traditional media could never do. We are beyond simple age and gender data, using household-level data, behavioral targeting and purchase history to ensure our message is delivered to the exact right family, in the right congressional district, at the precise moment we want.

Digital-first public affairs firms like mine treat every policy issue as a piece of specialized, searchable content, optimized for the platforms that younger audiences actually use for news, like TikTok and Instagram, instead of just going for an hour-long cable news segment.

For corporate and nonprofit leaders, the old playbook is a liability. If you are still paying for access to a distribution system that is dying and an information channel that is mistrusted, you’re going nowhere. To cut through the noise and achieve genuine impact, policy communicators must embrace the flexibility, targeting and authenticity that only a digital-first approach can provide.

The cord has been cut, and the public has moved on. Who’s the present and future? Digital.

Read the full article in PRWeek.

Josh Riggs serves as an Account Executive at Drive Public Affairs.