CNN reporters Acosta, Tapper weigh in on media coverage after Trump

“I don’t think the press should be trying to whip up the Biden presidency and turn it into must-see TV in a contrived way,” CNN's Acosta told the Atlantic.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
CNN host Jake Tapper (photo credit: ANDREW CULLEN/ REUTERS)
CNN host Jake Tapper
(photo credit: ANDREW CULLEN/ REUTERS)
Reporters around the US are breathing a sigh of relief with President-elect Joe Biden entering office on January 20.
US President Donald Trump has proved to be quite a nuisance for media channels around the country, referring to reports made by seasoned reporters as "fake news," favoring certain publications and becoming a fact-checking nightmare for journalists day in and day out during his tumultuous tenure.
No publication has taken more grief, abuse and condemnation from the president than CNN, however. The president, has on numerous occasions, called out CNN directly for its "unfair" reporting, called its reporters and coverage "fake news" and had millions of Americans joining in on the attacks.
With Biden's presidency just weeks away, two senior CNN correspondents have shared their views on how media coverage will change underneath the new administration.
CNN White House Correspondent Jim Acosta noted to The Atlantic that he believes Biden will prove to be less antagonistic than Trump, within the scope of media coverage, adding that "couldn't stomach" the pugnacious nature of the current sitting president.
“You are fake news,” Trump said to Acosta in 2017, calling his organization terrible and declining to take a question from him despite Acosta’s several attempts to shout one.
Before the interaction, Trump spent much of his 2016 presidential campaign bashing the news media for what he called unfair coverage, and continued the attacks throughout his tenure.
“I don’t think the press should be trying to whip up the Biden presidency and turn it into must-see TV in a contrived way,” Acosta told the Atlantic.
The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins stated that Acosta explained that the opinion was not a partisan belief, but a "matter of professional solidarity.
"In his view, Trump’s campaign to discredit the press has constituted a ‘nonstop national emergency,’ one that required a defiant response," Coppins stated.
“If being at the White House is not an experience that might merit hazard pay,” Acosta said, according to the Atlantic. “Then perhaps it is going to be approached differently.”
Acosta had his White House press access suspended in 2018, following a heated exchange between him and President Trump during a press conference.
CNN anchor Jake Tapper shared similar sentiments during an airing of CNN's Reliable Sources.
“Donald Trump, because of his disruptions and the way he disrupted just how presidents and public figures behave, and his actions to change the way that the news media writ large behaves... We felt in many ways the need to do more aggressive fact-checking,” Tapper said, according to the Washington Times. “The monologues … it’s basically a time to just turn to the camera and just present some facts in a way that might clear up where there is obfuscation whether it’s about matters of decency or matters of fact.
“I don’t know that we’re going to have the need to continue to do those quite the same way in a Biden administration. Maybe we will,” he added, according to the report. “I guess it’s entirely possible that this will happen, and we’ll be doing it.
"But I kind of suspect that news media coverage will change as a more, you know, ‘normal President’ takes office, whether it’s Joe Biden in 2021 or Nikki Haley in 2025, whatever," he concluded. "I mean, I think generally, there will be a return to some sort of non-Trump obsessive coverage.”
Zachary Keyser contributed to this report.


Related Tags
CNN