President Trump told the media at his entertaining press conference on Thursday that the American people simply don't trust them anymore. Reporters' first instinct would likely be to get defensive, but CBS anchor and "Face the Nation" host John Dickerson found himself agreeing with the president. In an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt on Friday, Dickerson acknowledged that the blame for Americans' lost faith in the media belongs to the Fourth Estate.
Hewitt noted that Trump is guilty of obvious misstatements, such as his claiming on Friday that he had the biggest electoral college win since President Reagan, which was quickly fact checked. Yet, his assumption that people mistrust the press is 100 percent accurate, Hewitt argued, because "Manhattan-Beltway elites have lost the country."
Dickerson agreed.
"Well, yes," he said. "I mean, yes, it’s true, and it’s not because of anything obviously Donald Trump did. The press did all that good work ruining its reputation on its own, and we can have a long conversation about what created that. Part of it, though, is what you mentioned about the local weather report, which is to say a lot of hysterical coverage about every little last thing that doesn’t warrant it. Having said that, it doesn’t mean, and in fact, it most explicitly does not mean that the press just throws out the standards."
If only CNN's Jim Acosta could take note of Dickerson's self-reflection. On Wednesday, when President Trump held a joint press conference with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and called on two conservative-leaning outlets (including Townhall) over more mainstream outlets, Acosta whined to his colleagues that the "fix was in." Never mind the fact that the questions asked were fair and relevant. CNN's reaction gave off an arrogance that Americans have come to loathe.
In a recent Gallup poll, only 32 percent said they have a great deal of or a fair amount of trust in the media.
As the president suggested on Thursday, if the mainstream media tries reporting the truth and quits obsessing over undermining him, they'll see their ratings begin to rise.