Evidence strongly supports the direction of Friedberg’s prediction (creators disrupting traditional media and journalism), but not clearly the specific claim that independent/creator media already constitute the majority of media volume consumed.

Supporting evidence for the disruption / rise of creators

• The global creator economy is now a very large, fast‑growing market: estimates put it around $200–250B in 2024, projected to exceed $1T by the early 2030s, with individual content creators responsible for roughly 60% of that revenue. (grandviewresearch.com)
• Ad revenue on creator-driven platforms (YouTube, TikTok, etc.) is forecast in 2025 to overtake that of traditional media (TV, print, radio, cinema) for the first time, a major shift in where money and attention flow. (businessinsider.com)
• Streaming has surpassed broadcast + cable in U.S. TV viewing share, with YouTube alone capturing around 12.5% of all TV viewing time—driven largely by user‑generated and creator content—and social video platforms now accounting for about 20% of all TV viewing. (technology.org)
• For news specifically, a 2025 Reuters Institute report finds that, at least around the U.S. presidential inauguration, more Americans said they got news from social and video networks than from TV, news sites or apps, and it highlights online personalities (Rogan, Carlson, etc.) as increasingly central news sources. (reuters.com)
• Traditional journalism shows clear signs of disruption: Vice Media’s bankruptcy and layoffs, the shutdown of Vice.com news publishing and BuzzFeed News, repeated large layoffs at outlets like CNET and major newspapers such as The Washington Post, and ongoing declines in legacy news economics. (cnbc.com)

Where the prediction is not clearly fulfilled

• Pew finds about 1 in 5 U.S. adults regularly get news from “news influencers” (independent social‑media personalities, mostly unaffiliated with news orgs), rising to roughly 37–38% among adults under 30. While a majority of these influencers are indeed independent (77% have no news‑org affiliation), this is still far from a majority of the overall population’s news consumption. (pewresearch.org)
• On TikTok, among people who use it for news, influencers/celebrities and other non‑journalist accounts are as or more important than news outlets—but that’s one platform and subset of users, not total media consumption. (pewresearch.org)
• In some countries (e.g., Australia), social media has just overtaken legacy online sources as a main news source, but TV remains the single biggest source, and traditional outlets still command large audiences. (theguardian.com)
• Even on TV, where creator platforms are surging, social/creator video accounts for roughly a fifth of viewing time, not a clear majority of all media usage across devices. (tvtechnology.com)

Why the result is “ambiguous”

• There is strong, measurable evidence that traditional journalism/press is being heavily disrupted by creator-style media and that creators are capturing a rapidly growing share of attention and revenue.
• However, whether independent journalists and creator-type media now constitute the majority of all media volume consumed is not cleanly measurable and is not clearly supported by available data. In most broad, population‑level metrics we can see (news sources, TV viewing, etc.), creator content is large and growing but not unambiguously a majority.
• The timeframe (“in the coming years”) is also vague; by late 2025, many trend elements look directionally correct, but the strong form of the prediction (clear majority dominance) can’t be definitively confirmed or falsified.

Because the disruption part is clearly happening but the “majority of media volume” claim is not clearly met or refuted with current data, the fairest evaluation is ambiguous, rather than fully right or fully wrong.