President-elect Donald Trump’s relations with the press is garnering much comment as journalists and free press advocates assess how Trump’s adversarial position will play out during his administration. In an open letter to Trump, Columbia Journalism Review Editor in Chief Kyle Pope, January 17, 2017, said the press corps has its own way of engaging. He instructed Trump that access was nice but that if denied, the press had other avenues to the news. He noted that the press decided the rules regarding speaking on or off the record and how much airtime accorded the administration and its supporters. And he reminded Trump that reporters would probe government bureaucracies to find the news in a way he would be unable to prevent.
Law professor Jay Rosen, PressThink, December 28, 2016, makes a number of suggestions for the press during the Trump era including restructuring beats,: dealing with Trump’s tweets to provide context, fact-checking; if kept outside, defend the daily briefing, demand response to FOIA requests and dig deep; report on how he keeps his campaign promises and go on red state media to report on what he actually does; and holding power to account by investigative reports such as David Fahrenthold’s report on Trump’s phony philanthrophy.