The White House is holding briefings for influencers, welcoming YouTube channels into the press room, and operating a “new media” pool alongside the traditional one. President Donald Trump’s administration is also seizing control of the wider press pool from the White House Correspondents’ Association, continuing to try to block the Associated Press’s access, and proudly sending high-ranking officials to the “uninvited” alternative to the association’s annual dinner.

Trump and the media are grappling with the same fundamental reality: Most Americans do not trust mass media. According to Gallup, which has tracked this annually for more than half a century, trust in media has been on a steady decline since the mid-1970s. As of last year, this number remains at an all-time low.

Trump, for his part, has a strategy to exploit this low trust. And it presents journalists with an opportunity to turn lemons into lemonade.

The president and his team learned long ago to lean into theatrical rows with journalists on social media and during news conferences. In this second term, though, the White House isn’t just yanking the microphone from Jim Acosta (formerly of CNN), it’s also pursuing a communications strategy that opens up access to influencers, podcasters and new outlets — including some without a pro-Trump bent.

Why? First, as Trump told podcaster Lex Fridman in September, “I just see that these platforms are starting to dominate, they’re getting very big numbers.” The president knows they are more powerful than many people in legacy media realize and have massive audiences. It’s also an opportunity for the White House to keep conservative media happy.

This, unfortunately, has led to Brian Glenn, a pro-Trump partisan from Real America’s Voice and the boyfriend of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), barking at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office about his clothes. It has upended the White House Correspondents’ Association, as reporters struggle to mount united front against the abrupt changes in access. And it has led to embarrassing softballs being lobbed at press secretary Karoline Leavitt from “new media” at White House briefings. When Leavitt called on Cara Castronuova of LindellTV, (yes, really), Castronuova used her precious opportunity to confront power by asking whether the White House would consider releasing the president’s fitness plan: “He actually looks healthier than ever before, healthier than he did eight years ago, and I’m sure everyone in this room could agree. Is he working out with Bobby Kennedy and is he eating less McDonald’s?” Time well spent.

Yet legacy media should see an opportunity here. Like it or not, the public is broadly on Trump’s side in the debate over trust in media. The reason people turn to podcasts is not only technological. They want to compare perspectives, and they should be trusted to do that just as much as conventional reporters trust ourselves.

Listeners know that Dave Smith, who recently debated journalist Douglas Murray on Joe Rogan’s podcast, is a comedian and not a military historian or war correspondent. They know that Theo Von is not a professor and that Tucker Carlson is not a doctor. What they want is a cacophony. They don’t want to hear both sides of an argument, they want to hear all sides.

This, of course, requires more time and effort. But consider that, during the pandemic, reading both old and new media outlets was one of the only ways to accurately assess school closures. During the first Trump administration, as Erik Wemple usefully reported for The Post, it was the only way to get the full story of Trump’s alleged ties to the Kremlin.

This is a competition in which the comparatively well-resourced bureaus of legacy media should be able to prevail. But it will require some humility and some willingness to learn from the outlets currently surging.

To be sure, some bad actors operate in the Wild West of new media, people who regurgitate propaganda while posing as reporters. But there are many good actors, too.

Even some journalists from legacy publications are beginning to see the benefits of starting their own outlets on platforms such as Substack and YouTube. Ryan Lizza recently left Politico to start a Substack, joining traditional journalists Tara Palmeri, Chris Cilizza and even Acosta. Every day, the new media space becomes less dominated by antiestablishment voices.

These scrappy publications can benefit immensely from the White House’s pledge to keep expanding access.

New media is not just Brian Glenn. It includes plenty of genuine journalists whose key difference with other reporters is typically having an open mind. Is it possible to be as confident that Glenn voted for Donald Trump as that Anderson Cooper voted against him?

Glenn might not be fair, but he is at least honest about the biases shaping his coverage. News consumers appreciate this.

New independent platforms need not be the only avenue to a better future. It’s an unpleasant reality that a handful of Americans trust LindellTV more than journalists who’ve covered politics truthfully for decades. But this is today’s reality, and veteran reporters, if they are confident in their own work, should not fear sitting next to influencers, propagandists and bloggers. Some people consume news to reinforce their belief systems, but most people just want the truth. The easiest way for legacy reporters to stand out is by getting better, and the easiest way to get better is to be fair and to cover all the news.

Axios’s Alex Thompson made this point on Saturday as he accepted the Aldo Beckman award at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Referring to President Joe Biden’s declining capacities in 2020, he said: “We, myself included, missed a lot of this story, and some people trust us less because of it. We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being at such lows.”

“Missed” is probably the wrong word. The media did not accidentally fail to discern a newsworthy development. Journalists downplayed the story while conservative outlets such as Newsmax asked tough questions that ultimately were vindicated. Eventually, in the weeks before last June’s presidential debate, the Wall Street Journal published a robust report revealing that sources from both parties “described a president who appears slower now, someone who has both good moments and bad ones.”

Reporters Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes gestured at the White House’s efforts to obstruct the paper’s story, noting, “The White House kept close tabs on some of The Wall Street Journal’s interviews with Democratic lawmakers.” Understandably, the Biden administration pushed journalists not to report on the murmurings and, too often, this pressure campaign succeeded. Nontraditional news outlets always had less to fear from an angry White House.

Journalism is a marketplace, and most news consumers are hungry for truth above all else. They want it from podcasts, but they want it from newspapers and morning shows, too. Vigorous competition can make all the players better.

Emily Jashinsky is the Washington correspondent for UnHerd and co-hosts the weekly news show “Counter Points” on Breaking Points.