The editor of the Washington Post, which staffed up its White House team to cover the new administration, said the paper would have covered a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidency with the same intensity as it has President Trump.
Cheered by journalists at a media roundtable in California late Tuesday, Marty Baron also said that despite some criticism, the Post is doing its job, not acting as the opposition.
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“I just look at it as a new administration that we should be covering as aggressively, as energetically as possible. If Hillary Clinton were in the White House, we would be doing the very same thing,” he said at the Code Media conference.
“I don’t see us as the opposition party to the administration,” he said, and added, “The way I view it is, we’re not at war with the administration, we’re at work. We’re doing our jobs.”
The paper has been critical of the Trump administration in news columns and especially in editorials and columns. It has also led some of the reporting into the Flynn scandal.
Trump stiff-armed the paper during the campaign, though he still gave it interviews.
Baron said that his team is focused big time on Trump because the new administration is trying “essentially disrupt the established order…basically blow up the Washington establishment.”
He also agreed with Trump, noting that there have been “lots of leaks.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
