President Donald Trump speaks as CNN’s Jim Acosta, standing at right, listens, during a news conference in the East Room of the White House, Nov. 7, 2018, in Washington. (Evan Vucci/AP Photo)
Several mainstream media news reporters have admitted that their careers have personally benefited from bashing the President in the public eye.
Perhaps the most well known anti-Trump journalist, CNN’s Jim Acosta, told The Atlantic Tuesday that the admitted hostile relationship with President Trump at press conferences attracted national attention and was paying dividends. Many people have accused the CNN reporter of grandstanding or trying to make the news rather than simply report it.
Acosta said he wasn’t the only one to see his career take off following President Trump’s 2016 victory. He then cited a number of White House reporters that were “showered with book deals, speaking gigs and hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers.”
Outside the White House press room, the benefits to anti-Trump writers continued with New York Magazine journalist Olivia Nuzzi also telling The Atlantic her career reached new heights after she started tailoring her reports on the President and other Republicans to her left-wing audience. She said she learned over the last four years that her fan base liked anything to do with bad mouthing the President.
Some reporters, including a once cable news anchor who requested his identity be kept a secret, suggested fear of professional criticism over their reporting was no longer relevant and that the praise from anti-Trump celebrities on Twitter had become a “narcotic.”
