This marks the fourth year in a row that Politico Magazine has surveyed the White House press corps, our annual snapshot of the highs, lows and general chaos of trying to cover the most powerful office on earth. Every administration has its own running fights with the press, but this year the context was different from the start: a new president who gets unparalleled media attention, yet has publicly attacked the press over and over since taking office.
President Donald Trump has called the media “fake news,” the “enemy of the American people,” “dishonest” and much more; he has singled out individual reporters with criticism and name-calling. At the same time, Trump has welcomed multiple outlets into the Oval Office for interviews, makes a point of praising the journalists he likes, and devours print and TV coverage of him and his staff. And in case there was any doubt that this was a new team with a whole new relationship to the media, for the first time (that we know of), someone in the press corps leaked our questions to the administration—and, for the first time, the White House emailed Politico Magazine demanding detailed answers about the survey and how it was conducted. (The answers are in the fine print at the end of this piece.)
So what’s it really like to cover Trump? Does he really treat the media like the “opposition party,” in his adviser Steve Bannon’s words? Finally, how do reporters rate their own coverage of the Trump presidency?...
Politico's fourth annual survey of the White House press corps. Good reading.