Michael Grynbaum

White House misconduct. Sensational leaks. Battling broadsheets. The swirling story around President Trump’s dealings with Russia is being compared in journalism circles to past blockbusters like Watergate and the Monica Lewinsky scandal — with a 21st-century twist. News organizations like The Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN are jousting for scoops, but instead of sending clerks to grab the early editions from newsstands, editors watch the news unfold on Twitter in real time. Anonymous sources are driving bombshell stories, and leaks are springing from encrypted iPhone messaging apps rather than from meetings in underground parking garages. The news cycle begins at sunrise, as groggy reporters hear the ping of a presidential tweet, and ends sometime in the overnight hours, as newspaper editors tear up planned front pages scrambled by the latest revelation from Washington. In consequence and velocity, the political developments of the past four weeks — has it been only four weeks? — are jogging memories of momentous journalistic times.

Stephen K. Bannon, President Donald Trump’s chief White House strategist, laced into the American press during an interview, arguing that news organizations had been “humiliated” by an election outcome few anticipated, and repeatedly describing the media as “the opposition party” of the current administration. “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for awhile,” Bannon said during a telephone call. “I want you to quote this,” Bannon added. “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”

“The elite media got it dead wrong, 100 percent dead wrong,” Bannon said of the election, calling it “a humiliating defeat that they will never wash away, that will always be there.” “The mainstream media has not fired or terminated anyone associated with following our campaign,” Bannon said. “Look at the Twitter feeds of those people: they were outright activists of the Clinton campaign.” “That’s why you have no power,” Bannon added. “You were humiliated.”

The Trump White House sent a message to the media: Be nice.

At his first formal briefing on Jan 23, Sean Spicer, the new White House press secretary, told reporters that the Administration sometimes does “the right thing,” adding: “And it would be nice, once in a while, for someone just to report it straight up.” It was an oddly plaintive appeal from an Administration that tends to attack the press, not bemoan it. And it was a sharp contrast from Spicer’s appearance 48 hours prior, when he blasted the news media as “shameful,” made false claims about the attendance for Trump’s inaugural and prompted speculation that his relationship with the White House press corps had been irreparably damaged after a single day.

For wary Washington journalists, it seemed only a matter of time before Donald Trump’s presidency would lead to a high-tension standoff between his administration and the news media. But on Day 1?

The news media world found itself in a state of shock on Jan 22, a day after President Trump declared himself in “a running war with the media” and the president’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, used his first appearance on the White House podium to deliver a fiery jeremiad against the press. Worse, many journalists said, were the falsehoods that sprang from the lips of both President Trump and Spicer. “It was absolutely surprising and stunning,” said the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, Jeff Mason.

Not only did President-elect Donald Trump break the norms of presidential engagement with the news media, snubbing organizations because of an unflattering story, but he also had elements of a frustrated political press corps warring with one another.

By the time the news conference finished — with Omarosa Manigault, the “Apprentice” star and future member of the White House staff, heckling Jim Acosta of CNN, shouting, “Cut it out!” — President-elect Trump had bobbed and weaved his way through nearly an hour of interrogation, offering vague answers to critical questions about his administration. The treatment of Acosta raised alarms among news media advocates and his fellow journalists, particularly after Acosta described a threat by incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer to eject him from the news conference when he persisted in trying to ask the president-elect a question. Immediately after the news conference, CNN defended its reporting and drew a sharp distinction between its news story and “BuzzFeed’s decision to publish unsubstantiated memos.” On a broadcast, the CNN anchor Jake Tapper said that BuzzFeed’s move “hurts us all.” “It’s irresponsible to put uncorroborated information on the internet,’’ Tapper said. “I can understand why President-elect Trump would be upset about that; I would be upset about it. too.’’

President-elect Donald Trump is entering office with financial entanglements that are exotic and far-flung: a condominium project in Manila, a luxury furniture maker in Istanbul, golf courses in Scotland and Ireland, and a hotel in Azerbaijan. But starting in January, Trump’s most visible business interest will be beamed directly into millions of American living rooms: “The Celebrity Apprentice” is back, and the president-elect is coming with it.

Just weeks before Inauguration Day, President-elect Trump will resume his role as an executive producer of the NBC reality show, an unlikely side project for a commander in chief, and one that is poised to bring him hundreds of thousands of dollars in income. Modern presidents, including the current one, have received royalties from sales of memoirs and book projects. But Trump’s ties to the show — now starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and renamed “The New Celebrity Apprentice” — potentially thrust the president-elect into a host of potential conflicts, from coziness with the brands that advertise on the show to his relationship with the network that airs it.

In extraordinary exchanges, aides to Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Jeb Bush openly accused Jeffrey Zucker, CNN’s president, of enabling Donald Trump and undermining their candidates in the Republican primary, heckling from their seats as Zucker spoke on a panel in a hotel ballroom. It was a visceral airing of grievances before an audience of the country’s leading political operatives and journalists, gathered for what is typically a staid postelection conference at Harvard. And it captured CNN’s lightning-rod position in the debate over the role of the media in Trump’s rise and, now, his looming presidency.

In the morning, President-elect Donald Trump was the media-bashing firebrand many of his supporters adore, denouncing The New York Times as a “failing” institution that covered him inaccurately — “and with a nasty tone!” Eight hours later, after a lunchtime interview with editors and reporters for The Times — one that was briefly canceled, after President-elect Trump quarreled over the ground rules, then restored — the mood of the president-elect, it seemed, had mellowed.

“The Times is a great, great American jewel,” he declared as he prepared to leave the gathering in the newspaper’s 16th-floor boardroom, where portraits of former presidents adorn the walls. “A world jewel,” added President-elect Trump, who was seated next to Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the paper’s publisher. “And I hope we can all get along.” In an extraordinary 75-minute meeting — parrying, debating and, at times, joking with the leaders of a publication that has long been an object of Trump’s fascination and frustration — the president-elect’s chameleonlike approach to the news media was on full display. He dismissed his earlier talk of strengthening libel laws, telling the assembled journalists, “I think you’ll be OK.” He expressed interest in improving his relationship with the paper, saying, “I think it would make the job I am doing much easier.” “To me,” President-elect Trump said at one point, “it would be a great achievement if I could come back here in a year or two, and have a lot of folks here say, ‘You’ve done a great job.’”

It had all the trappings of a high-level rapprochement: President-elect Donald Trump, now the nation’s press critic in chief, inviting the leading anchors and executives of television news to join him for a private meeting of minds. On-air stars like Lester Holt, Charlie Rose, George Stephanopoulos and Wolf Blitzer headed to Trump Tower for the off-the-record gathering, typically the kind of event where journalists and politicians clear the air after a hard-fought campaign. Instead, the president-elect delivered a defiant message: You got it all wrong.

President-elect Trump, whose antagonism toward the news media was unusual even for a modern presidential candidate, described the television networks as dishonest in their reporting and shortsighted in missing the signs of his upset victory. He criticized some in the room by name, including CNN’s president, Jeffrey Zucker, according to multiple people briefed on the meeting who were granted anonymity to describe confidential discussions. It seemed the meeting was being used as a political prop, especially after Trump-friendly news outlets trumpeted the session as a take-no-prisoners move by a brave president-elect.

Since Election Day, President-elect Donald Trump has refused to let reporters accompany him to the White House, accused the media of inciting protests and tweeted accusations that The New York Times fabricated stories about his transition.

As a candidate, he vilified journalists by name and blacklisted news outlets that displeased him. So when President-elect Trump ducked out to dinner one night without informing the journalists assigned to cover him, it struck White House reporters as a small but significant omen that cordial relations between the president and his press corps, a hallmark of the West Wing, were under threat. Is it a big deal if a president goes to dinner and the press doesn’t know? In a word, yes, according to former administration officials, journalists and a group of press advocacy organizations that issued an open letter to President-elect Trump arguing that Americans “deserve to know what the president is doing.”