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Donald Trump launches all-out assault on the media

Being the President of the United States comes with some obvious advantages – rent-free accommodation in an imposing residence on Pennsylvania Avenue, an expensively customised Boeing 747 and a superb wine cellar, to name but three of the job’s most appealing perks.

The downside, as every president in living memory has privately complained, is the White House press corps, whose members have a nasty habit of asking tough questions.

Previous US leaders gritted their teeth, flashed false smiles and dealt with the annoyance of the Fourth Estate as best they could.

But none of them were cut from the same abrasive cloth as Donald J. Trump, who made his contempt for the mainstream media a key element of almost every campaign-trail stump speech and now, since his inauguration on January 20, has elevated it to official White House policy.

Instead of soft-soaping the media in an effort to win favourable coverage, Mr Trump and his advisers have deliberately set out to “go around” the press and deliver their message direct to ‘Mr and Mrs Main Street USA’.

If that infuriates the media, which it most definitely does, so much the better, sneers Team Trump.

The latest assault on Washington tradition came on Sunday (AEST) when Mr Trump announced – as always via Twitter – that he would not be attending the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, set for the end of April.

An aide in the Trump administration has overnight defended the decision, saying he wasn’t elected to “spend his time with reporters and celebrities”.

Spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told ABC’s This Week: it’s “kind of naive of us to think that we can all walk into a room for a couple of hours and pretend that some of that tension isn’t there”.

No doubt previous US leaders also would have loved to skip the black-tie affair, but short of recovering from a would-be assassin’s bullet (Ronald Reagan) or being busy with a war on the Korean Peninsula (Harry Truman), none dared take a rain check on the night.

Wearing bogus grins those leaders went through the motions of dutifully lampooning themselves while taking apparently good-natured shots at their ink-stained tormentors in the invitation-only audience.

Like so many other aspects of the Trump administration’s approach to tradition, the pretence of a cosy and affable relationship with the press has been more than scuttled. It has been kicked, stomped, whipped and then flung with absolute contempt onto the pyre for a very public burning.

In his regard Mr Trump is once again re-writing the rule book, just as he did throughout his march toward the White House. The press seems never to have noticed just how poorly it is regarded by the US electorate, but Mr Trump most certainly did.

According to the most recent Gallup poll, a mere 32 per cent of voting Americans have any respect for the press – down a disturbing 20 per cent over the past two decades.

If you ever wondered why Mr Trump sends out so many tweets, that’s his reasoning and strategy in a nutshell. With an incredible 20 million-plus followers, he reckons he can reach more people than all the mainstream media outlets combined. More than that, the 140-character limit keeps his announcements, short, sharp and easily grasped – just the thing for reaching and impressing the biggest audience with the simplest messages.

But there is more to it than that: a lot more.

President Donald Trump calls on members of the press during a news conference.

The US President has banned several news organisations from attending a press briefing. Photo: AP

That stream of daily tweets has stripped the press of its ability to set the agenda. Indeed, it has made reporters answer to Mr Trump, rather than vice versa.

Past presidents issued press releases and had to hope that the newspapers and talking heads of the electronic media would “buy” their spin. Now the press must react to Mr Trump’s agenda, even as it struggles to keep pace with the blizzard of edicts and insults he thumb-types nightly from his phone.

“Fake news” has entered the language. Hardly a day goes by when Mr Trump does not deploy that emotionally charged term. Nor have we seen a week when he did not attack and assail specific news organisations, lambasting “dishonest” CNN one day, the “failing NY Times” the next.

Steve Bannon

Trump adviser Steve Bannon intensified his attacks on the media recently.

Mr Trump’s media svengali and chief strategist, former publisher of extreme-right website Breitbart.com, Steve Bannon, makes no bones about his boss being in a fight to the death with the media.

“If you think they’re going to give you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken,” Mr Bannon told a conservative conference last weekend, referring to the mainstream media. “Every day, it is going to be a fight.”

And that, rather than the White House’s other attractions, is perhaps what Mr Trump is enjoying most of all about his new job.

But the power to deflate the importance of the press, to outflank it via social media and exploit its mis-steps in order to diminish the value of genuine scoops, well that is the greatest presidential perk of them all.

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