The relationship between the media and Trump’s White House was contentious. It aroused suspicion and led to a disturbing increase in physical and verbal threats against journalists. Those threats were aided and fueled by Trump’s constant urging to his supporters of “fake news” and shouting at the press as “the enemy of the people.”
“I am not the only reporter to report on this White House that has been threatened with death,” Jim Acosta, CNN’s chief White House correspondent for “Reliable Sources” said on Sunday. “We can’t be in a place in this country where political reporters, White House correspondents, need bodyguards to cover political campaign events.”
Like many reporters, Acosta had its fair share of spars with the president over the years. An argument at a 2018 press conference led Trump and his aides to revoke Acosta’s White House press pass, which was later reinstated after a court ruled in favor of CNN in a legal dispute. It was an unprecedented act by a president many believed to jeopardize the protection of journalists.
But the impact of Trump’s repeated attacks doesn’t stop there. It has also sunk in the hearts and minds of a number of Americans, who now question trusted new sources or outright condemned fact-checked media and reporters as propaganda machines against the president. Thousands of misinformation and conspiracy theories cause fewer Americans to care about what has been proven to be true and false.
The outcome of Trump’s animosity towards the news media over the years has been shocking. It has been broken down by the confidence in the press and at the same time it has sown seeds of skepticism that have taken shape in allegations of electoral fraud, falsehoods about voting and hesitation about vaccines.
“It’s just a pervasive hostility and anti-democratic hostility to the trial that I hope we will never receive again,” Acosta said. “It’s just so damaging and destructive to our democracy.”