It was easy to imagine journalists tugging at their hair as they read the notorious comment of senior White House adviser Steve Bannon last month, calling the media “the opposition party” and saying that the press should “keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.”
David Swerdlick, an editor at the Washington Post, said on CNN that Bannon’s comments were “unwarranted.”
“We’re not supposed to be state television here,” said the channel’s top political analyst Gloria Borger.
But the conflict and apparent chasm between the national press and the Trump White House belies the truth: The new administration has been a godsend to reporters, columnists and TV anchors who claim to be under assault.
Even after the election, when news interest generally tapers off, cable news boomed. Broadcast ratings are up and so are subscriptions at major news publications.
In January, Fox News saw a 30 percent average increase in total day ratings from the same period last year, according to the New York Times. MSNBC saw a 7 percent increase, and CNN a 5 percent bump.
This comes after more than a year of Trump counterpunching the slightest gurgle of criticism from news media. After what amounted to an all-out war Trump waged on the press, the news business has white hot ratings.
Throughout the campaign, when Trump believed he was getting negative coverage from the New York Times, his hometown’s biggest newspaper, he dubbed it “the failing New York Times.”
Mark Thompson, CEO of the Times, said in an interview this month on CNBC that the paper has hit 3 million subscribers, more than at any other time in its history. The Washington Post, late in December, announced it was “profitable” and was hiring 60 more journalists.
Fox News hosted the only Republican primary debate that Trump skipped, and Megyn Kelly, now a former star anchor at Fox, was on the receiving end of countless Twitter stings from the businessman.
Still, she earned a promotion to network TV, landing a contract to host her own NBC shows, one during daytime weekdays and another on Sunday evenings.
After Vanity Fair in December published a deliberately salty review of Trump Grill, a restaurant in Trump Tower, Trump shot back with a tweet that said the magazine was “way down, big trouble, dead!”
Vanity Fair’s answer was to promote itself on its homepage with a one-year deal for new subscribers who want to read “the ‘way down, big trouble, dead!’ magazine Trump doesn’t want you to read.”
The magazine said that over the next couple of days, it sold 42,000 new subscriptions, an astonishing number in a business that has seen almost nothing but steep decline since 2008.
It’s a paradox that Trump has so fiercely fought the media, yet at the same time, he appears to have played a big role in driving people to it.
Journalists interviewed by the Washington Examiner, all of whom spoke anonymously so they could offer candid analysis about the White House they’ve been tasked with covering objectively, said there are countless factors that have created the often confusing dynamic between Trump and news organizations.
“He’s interesting for sure,” said one reporter who writes on politics for Vanity Fair. “There’s not just a business aspect but this weird psychological aspect as well. He’s got several giant personal flaws, and if there’s anything journalists love, it’s narratives and difficult characters.”
A producer at MSNBC said it’s Trump’s rapid pace signing executive orders and public comments — his Twitter remains a steady stream of blunt and often controversial statements — that have kept the media moving and the public engaged with several stories at any given moment.
“So much uncertainty,” the producer said. “And he’s doing so much so quickly that people can’t keep up. People are watching more and tuning in to cable news for longer periods of time.”
In the first week’s of Trump’s presidency, the former reality TV star has kept a frenetic pace. Each day has been divided in near equal parts with undoing his predecessor’s legacy, attempting to fulfill campaign promises on trade, immigration and healthcare, and fighting back against any reports that he feels diminish his standing in the White House.
In what might otherwise be his free time, Trump, by his own admission, watches a lot of TV news. And when moved by a story, he appears to react to it in real time on Twitter.
It’s believed that was the case when in late January he sent out a tweet that initially seemed arbitrary.
“If Chicago doesn’t fix the horrible ‘carnage’ going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds!” the message said on a Tuesday night.
A reporter at CNN noticed, however, that the statistics in Trump’s tweet and even the word “carnage” had been included just a little before in a segment on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.”
Trump, it seemed, was offering commentary and drawing inspiration from prime-time cable news programming.
One Fox News anchor told the Washington Examiner that Trump’s history in reality TV — he remains credited as an executive producer on NBC’s “The Apprentice,” though he has said he has nothing to do with it — and his affinity for TV as a medium have made themselves apparent in the early days of his presidency.
That, the anchor said, has helped in gripping the nation’s attention and keeping it interested in news.
“I think the pacing of Trump is very much a television pace,” the anchor said. “There’s always a tease at the end of every block: ‘When we come back, find out who I’m nominating to the Supreme Court!’ Trump thinks like a TV producer. And there’s never dead air, ever.”
The anchor said it’s not an accident that Trump, who bragged throughout the campaign that the debates broke record ratings because of him, a claim difficult to dispute, has kept so much attention on himself.
For Trump, the anchor said, the more eyes on him, the more successful he believes he is.
“The way to understand Trump is [he’s] a guy who sincerely loves TV and who was very successful in TV and he understands it,” he said. “Trump’s bottom line goal is more viewers. And that’s just the way his brain works. His instincts are all about getting better ratings, more viewers.”
But by nature of being in front of the public, as when he invites cameras into the Oval Office for nearly all major executive order signings, and his high activity on social media, one editor at a Washington-based news publication said it’s only natural for people to have more interest.
“People are interested in the news because Trump is getting things done,” the editor said. “President Obama sort of quit with the ‘hope and change’ facade after his first year in office and became more of the standard president who just oversees the bureaucracy, which is defined more by gridlock and stagnancy, and isn’t very interesting to watch.
“Trump, on the other hand, arguably changed more during the first two weeks of his presidency than Obama did in eight years. If that pace continues, it’s going to be good for the news industry.”
The result is a caustic relationship that yields positive results for both sides: Trump maintains a foil, rallying his supporters, and national media feed on the dramatic conflict that draws viewers and readers.
But some in the news industry say there’s a problem for journalists that may come to outweigh the current financial benefits.
Since winning the election, Trump has moved from only insulting the media to throwing blanket doubt on specific news operations.
After CNN in January published a report that referred to unsubstantiated claims about Trump’s private life, Trump called the network “fake news.”
He used the same term to label the New York Times in a Twitter message in February. “After being forced to apologize for its bad and inaccurate coverage of me after winning the election, the FAKE NEWS New York Times is still lost!” he wrote, though the Times never apologized for any of its reporting.
“I think Trump is undermining American confidence in the press,” said one reporter at CNN. “That’s far more important than ratings.”
And yet, CNN’s Jake Tapper recently touted his network’s standing despite Trump’s barbs.
Noting that CNN had its “best year ever” in 2016, Tapper offered a “#ProTip” to his followers: “People in power attacking media providing tough coverage actually helps those outlets.”
