A new phase for Trump’s media war

Media coverage of Donald Trump is shifting in a more negative direction as the presumptive GOP presidential nominee opens another front in his war with the Fourth Estate.

“Especially with the Times and the Post, there has been a really clear shift in the nature of its coverage of Trump,” said Steven Livingston, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University. “You also saw this recently when CNN was fact-checking Trump live. “There is a sense that it is now acceptable, or expected, for news organizations to go beyond the conventional professional standards of even-handedness; that this guy is in need of extra special care and attention,” Livingston added. The shift comes after new twists in the complicated relationship between Trump and the media. The media face obvious challenges.

“It’s the media’s duty to check facts, but the media have minimal credibility, so therefore the fact-checking has minimal credibility,” said Tobe Berkovitz, a Boston University professor who specializes in political communications. “If the public don’t believe or trust the media, why would they trust the media’s fact-checking?”