When she was fired by NBC in 2018, she believed it was the end of her career. She went to dark places in her mind. But she bounced back with her own broadcasting company and has never been happier or more influential.

The same story has been told by Tucker Carlson, whose network is gigantic and whose influence is far beyond even the heights he obtained at Fox in the old days. I have no direct knowledge of how many people work for his personal channel but it is a reasonable guess that it is no more than a dozen.

Everyone knows about the success and reach of Joe Rogan's show. Apart from that, there are many thousands more with influence in their own sectors of reach. The share of influence dominated by legacy seems to be falling dramatically. You can detect their influence in this election season in which candidates are working the podcast circuit.

You might chalk this up to technology: everyone has the capacity now to make content and distribute it. Therefore, of course, people do it.

The real story, however, is more complicated.

A new poll from Gallup offers an intriguing look.

The latest polls show trust in major media is at an all-time low. It's fallen from a post-Watergate high in 1976 of 72 percent to 31 percent today. That is an enormous slide, impossible to dismiss as mere technological change. Along with that, the poll documents dramatic losses of trust in government and essentially all official institutions.

The loss of trust has hit all age groups but more profoundly affects people under 40 years of age. These are folks who have grown up with alternatives and developed a sophisticated understanding of information flows and are deeply suspicious of any institution that seeks control over public culture.

Comments Gallup: "The news media is the least trusted group among 10 U.S. civic and political institutions involved in the democratic process. The legislative branch of the federal government, consisting of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, is rated about as poorly as the media, with 34 percent trusting it."

In contrast, "majorities of U.S. adults express at least a fair amount of trust in their local government to handle local problems (67 percent), their state government to address state problems (55 percent), and the American people as a whole when it comes to making judgments under our democratic system about the issues facing the country (54 percent)."