addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress on Tuesday night, getting more than 36 million people to watch. That's 13% higher than former President Joe Biden's 2024 speech (32.2 million), but lower than each of Trump's first-term congressional addresses (47.7 million viewers in 2017, 45.6 million in 2018, 46.8 in 2019, 37.2 million in 2020).
Trump may be the president, but fewer people are listening to him.
That includes Black Louisianans.
, Nielsen rating results show that "this year’s total accounts for viewers across ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, Merit Street, Telemundo, Univision, PBS, CNN, CNNe, FOX Business, Fox ƹϴý Channel, MSNBC, ƹϴýmax and ƹϴýNation." Fox ƹϴý didn't focus on Trump's viewership loss. Instead, the conservative network claimed success because 10.7 million of the viewers watched their network.
What Nielsen didn't measure was those who chose to watch Black, independent media, people who chose something other than , people who deliberately chose to ignore Trump.
, a Black-focused daily digital news program, has a healthy audience of Black and other people. Martin started the show in 2018. He's built the startup into a mainstay in six years. Tuesday night was a major high.
Internationally prominent Black journalist Roland Martin presented a March 4, 2025 program that was an alternative to President Donald Trump's joint congressional speech broadcast the same night. It drew more than 1.1 million viewers. Black Louisianans tuned in.
In an interview, Martin said until Tuesday night the highest viewership was about 29,000 viewers. That was the night that the was released. About 8,000 were online before the first half-hour ended.
On Tuesday night, more than 1.1 million people watched the "State of Our Union," Martin's Trump speech alternative. People who tuned into Martin's six-plus-hour special heard the , president of Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call For Moral Revival. As an anti-poverty activist, Barber emphasized the plight or poor people and workers and issued a call for action.
"We’ve got to intensify and increase and embolden our agitation," as I watched. "We’ve got to stand tall because bowing down is not an option.”
Martin said it's taken focus and time to build the national media platform he leads, and Tuesday night is evidence that Black people want to engage with independent Black media addressing serious issues without bowing to Trump's stupidity.
Hundreds of Louisianans tuned in to hear Barber, Martin and a host of nonpartisan, partisan and elected officials, including . New Orleans native , president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, was featured on a panel.
Before the show, Martin sent a text to a few friends and it flew into the Black universe. It popped into community and family text groups. It was posted on social media, including on . "Black Louisianans were definitely watching," he said later.
Yes, they were.
I got several copies of the text. So did Dwana Makeba, a Gentilly hair stylist, former educator and Army veteran who wasn't going to watch Trump then chose to watch Martin's show after several friends sent her the text. She watched the program from shortly after 7 p.m. until 11:30 p.m. Makeba, 54, decided to watch the Trump recording the next morning, but she stopped. "I was so repulsed," she told me. She said the president was "in full arrogance" mode talking about things he's done "as if those things were positive," knowing he's hurting children, workers and veterans like her.
Retired WWL anchor Sally-Ann Roberts was watching, too. "I watched and was impressed with Bishop Barber's sermon," she shared.
Amber Payne, the publisher and general manager of The Emancipator, saw an unexpected and huge response to a planned 24-hour livestream on the day of President Donald Trump's joint congressional speech. Louisianans were tuned in.
What happened Tuesday night also surprised , publisher and general manager of The Emancipator, a digital news outlet that challenges readers to think seriously about race, racism and structural racism and how it impacts everyone. Since it started in spring 2022, the online magazine hasn't done anything like the attempted a few days ago.
The outlet had 98,000 livestream viewers, including 21,000 during the time that the president spoke to the joint session of Congress. The broadcast was so successful that they picked up 2,700 new subscribers.
"We've never done anything quite like this," Payne shared with me Thursday. "We've held other live streams across YT (YouTube) and IG (Instagram), but nothing compares to this."
Payne said what happened shows that "there were a number of people looking for refuge" from what was expected.
Trump won . At least 50.2% of voters wanted someone else. Trump and the GOP toyed with large media even as they capitalized on the reach of independent and single-person media platforms. Democrats should pay attention to Martin's and Payne's success. Obviously, Makeba and others will spend hours where there is appealing, substantive programming.
