Trump is at war with the press — and it’s time for the press to stop helping him

[Commentary] For more than a year now, Donald Trump — first as a candidate, then as president — has made a war against the press a central plank of his public persona. He has singled out individual journalists for ad hominem attacks and declared entire news organizations to be working against America’s interests.

The lack of trust that now exists between the press and the public didn’t start with Trump, though he certainly has done his part to exacerbate it. It has been building slowly for decades, to the point that the conversation between the media and its readers is broken. Many Americans no longer think the press listens to or understands them, and they long ago started tuning us out. We became part of the establishment that had turned its back on them. These are our failings, and they need to be fixed. Reporters should be focused on the president’s team and his policies, examining his remaking of American government. These are the stories that resonate with Americans, not his views about what’s airing on MSNBC or CNN some Monday morning. We are already seeing some excellent reporting in this vein. We need more.

[Kyle Pope is editor and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review.]