The very unconventional style of Presidency of President Trump has shaken the media of the country and is now creating a completely new dynamics, which plays an essential role as the President enters year two of his presidency.
Some of the leading giants in the media industry – both journalism and the cable news are now adapting to the new and more confrontational style of reporting about the President, by creating charges for bias for kindling heated debates within the media industry about how fairly the President is being covered.
Responding to this unconventional style adopted by the media, Trump and his administration has gotten rid of media interviews and all press conferences completely, and even then, both Trump and his Allies are reporting and questioning the credibility of the media.
As the media is now provided with the political ammunition to attack the president by high profile corrections and refutations while they cover the President, they are mostly busy covering the probe involving the Russian involvement in the elections of 2016. The critics of the Media are also pointing towards the fallen standards of reporting of the media of the country as the media fights among themselves to get more material to demerit the President.
Even then, so far, the President has been a gift for the media, deriving all sorts of ratings, and creating record subscriptions and traffic from both – anti and pro trump audiences who are eager to know more about the President.
As a result, the President braces himself to enter the New Year with the Administration facing special probe about the Russian involvement, impeachment threat from the Democrats who are eager to take control of the Congress, and with a very hostile relationship with the media than any other president of the modern-day world.
“I don’t expect Trump’s approach to media relations will change at all, nor should we expect the press to tire of antagonizing Trump,” said Jeffrey McCall, who teaches as a professor of media studies at DePauw University. “Buckle your seatbelts. 2017 was a rough ride for news consumers trying to find out what was really happening in the world and 2018 will be an even greater challenge.”
None of the Television Networks have been as anti-trump as CNN – which was blamed for fueling Trump’s popularity during his campaign by broadcasting all of the Trump’s speeches and movements. CNN now is completely Trump-critical and continues to criticize both – the President and his administration.
Always having the image of being the mainstream alternate for Fox News for being Right-inclined, the network heads into the New Year being the perfect picture of media bias and chaos about Trump and his Presidency.
“CNN has always been like this, it’s just never had the spotlight on it like it does now,” said Armstrong Williams, owner of right inclined media houses in Sinclair Broadcast Group.
Fox News, however, remained to be constantly anti-Trump during all the GOP primaries but has now morphed into both – an ally and defender of president Trump.
“Fox News is reprehensible,” said Democratic strategist Andrew Feldman. “The way they’re trying to bolster Trump, it feels like a propaganda media outlet from a third-world country. It’s not supposed to be that way in the U.S.”
The New York Times and The Washington Post, meanwhile, are also covering the Russian probe and are enjoying record subscriptions. “These papers are on fire and in a competition for the kinds of consequential scoops we haven’t seen since Watergate,” said George Washington University media studies professor – Steven Livingston. “I think we’ll look back on this as the golden era of journalism.”
The president, however, prefers tweeting or chatting briefly with all the reporters in very informal settings — a trend that will most expectedly continue in 2018, even as he remains omnipresent in the media.
“Trump has used Twitter to bypass the normal press agenda-setting function and is essentially setting the agenda on his own terms through social media,” McCall, of DePauw University said. “I am not convinced Trump’s Twitter use is all that strategic, but it certainly has given him direct access to the citizenry and the news agenda in ways never seen before from the White House.”