President Trump's Impact on the Perception of the Media

Steve Adubato goes One-on-One with Joe Strupp, Journalist and Author of “Killing Journalism: How Greed, Laziness, (and Donald Trump) Are Destroying News and How We Can Save It,” to discuss the challenges the news media is facing today, what the future of journalism looks like, and President Trump’s impact on the perception of the media.

8/5/19 #2238

Excerpt:

"There he is. Joe Strupp. Journalist, author of a compelling book called Killing Journalism: How Greed, Laziness (and Donald Trump) Are Destroying News and How We Can Save It. Good see you Joe. Thanks for having me. Good to see you. Always. Let's jump right into this. What the heck does Donald Trump and what he has said about the media have to do with the fact that we, many of us in the media, particularly on the print side, are struggling financially? He didn't do that. I think he adds to the issue because, as most of the book deals with the media's having problems financially, it's having problems with oversight, there are fewer people doing news, there are more big corporations and big guns making money off of news. The cable channels are taking it easy. They want to get the talking heads. They want to get the panels. They want to get the angry. And everything's breaking news now. Even if it isn't. And you know, you've been in news longer than most of them. What's really not being covered is the important issues and the full in depth issues. Trump comes in. He attacks the press. Claims everyone's... Enemy of the people? Right. We're enemies of the people. We're fake news. It's just not true. By the way, fake news? Fake news? When people just repeat "fake news" that's something that they think is fake or that they don't like, what's the problem with that? A lot of it plays into the Internet. The Internet now puts everything on an equal scale. The New York Times... nytimes.com, cnn.com, njtv.com, is on the same level with, you name the site. And you're saying you don't think a significant number of people differentiate between... at NJTV, and in our production company, we collaborate with NJTV. Sure. We vet this stuff. We have to back this stuff up. Right. Do you think that...? They're the real news outlets but people could put up things like Infowars or WorldNetDaily or fake... wrongnews.com. So you...? Hold on, you think people thought Alex Jones was...? Whatever it might be. And they believe it. You think people thought Alex Jones was for real? Sure. They still do. He has plenty of followers. You know that. A lot of people think Trump is for real in many things he says that aren't true. Well he's for real because he's the president? Right? But even before he was president, he said a lot of false things. He had the birther idea. He had the one about seeing... About President Obama. He said he wasn't born in..."