CNN Reporters Admit Change in Coverage After Trump: Shouldn’t ‘Whip Up’ Biden Presidency

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden speaks to reporters before boarding his campaign
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Hannah Knudsen

Establishment media reporters confessed in a story for the Atlantic published this week that they will not cover Joe Biden’s administration in the same manner as President Trump’s, with CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta floating “hazard pay” for covering the Trump White House during the past four years.

In an Atlantic piece examining the direction the press will go in following the end of Trump’s first term, Acosta — who made a name for himself over the past four years by engaging in highly public spats with the commander-in-chief and asking what Trump once described as “nasty, snarky” questions — admitted that he will not approach a Biden administration with the same fervor.

“I don’t think the press should be trying to whip up the Biden presidency and turn it into must-see TV in a contrived way,” he said in what some consider an astonishing admission given Acosta’s propensity to turn Q&A’s with Trump into a live spectacle, as Breitbart News has documented over the years. One of the most memorable exchanges occurred early in 2017, with then-President-elect Trump calling CNN “terrible” and refusing to give Acosta a question by telling him, “You are fake news.” The exchange coincided with BuzzFeed and CNN reporting of an unverified dossier purportedly connecting Trump to Russia — a theory that has been thoroughly debunked:

“If that sounds like a double standard, Acosta told me it’s not partisan—it’s a matter of professional solidarity,” the Atlantic reported:

In his view, Trump’s campaign to discredit the press has constituted a “nonstop national emergency,” one that required a defiant response. “If being at the White House is not an experience that might merit hazard pay,” he said, “then perhaps it is going to be approached differently.”

CNN reporter Daniel Dale, widely known for “fact-checking” the president, also admitted that his day-to-day will likely change with the incoming administration. He has already determined that “it will not be a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job to fact-check Biden.”

“Though he stressed that the same ‘intensity and rigor’ should be applied to the incoming president, the simple reality is that Biden doesn’t lie nearly as often as Trump does,” the Atlantic reported.

New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi also signaled that basic reporting will shift with the incoming administration, noting social pressures from colleagues, specifically.

“On a purely social level, I don’t know that reporting critically on Joe Biden will feel as safe for reporters,” she told the Atlantic. “You’re not going to get yass queen–ed to death.”

Trump has continually targeted the fake news media throughout his years in office, particularly as members of the establishment media pushed the debunked Trump-Russia collision theory, which Democrats focused on for a sizeable portion of his first term, using it as a catalyst to question the legitimacy of his presidency. Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller never uncovered evidence of collusion or conspiracy with Russia, despite the months-long cravings from rapacious anti-Trump establishment media reporters.

Since then, Trump and his supporters have used the phrase “Fake News” to dismiss a catalog of unsubstantiated reports and left-wing narratives throughout his presidency:

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