President Obama scolds media for enabling Trump

President Barack Obama spoke directly to political journalists with a message that was part pep talk and part scolding to the Fourth Estate. President Obama delivered the keynote address at a dinner for 2016’s winner of an award for political reporting named for the late Robin Toner, who served as The New York Times’ top political correspondent before her death in 2008, shortly after President Obama’s historic election. President Obama used the speech as yet another chance to decry the politics of Donald Trump, this time highlighting the media’s role in the mogul’s fact-indifferent campaign.

“It’s worth asking ourselves what each of us — as politicians, as journalists, but most of all as citizens — may have done” to create the polarized political atmosphere, President Obama said. “Some may be more to blame than others for the current climate, but all of us are responsible for reversing it.” The job of a political reporter, he said, is “more than just handing someone a microphone.” President Obama continued, “It’s to probe and to question and to dig deeper.” President Obama expressed sympathy for reporters who are grappling with the changes in their industry, acknowledging that market forces and changing technology make it harder than ever for those driven by a sense of small-D democratic mission to fulfill it. “The choice between what cuts into your bottom lines and what harms us as a society is important. You have to choose which price is higher to pay, which cost is harder to bear,” President Obama said.