Journalists Must Rethink Their Relationship With Trump

Last Friday's White House Correspondents' Dinner ended with Trump mocking a female CNN anchor by comparing her to a transgender influencer, ridiculing the governor of California, and delivering what witnesses described as a stream of grievances and attacks — while the assembled press corps sat in the room and took it. The following day, the Times' own chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker, posted that the dinner had failed to "advance" the First Amendment and called on the WHCA to "rethink" the event entirely. His wife, New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser, was blunter: "If journalists won't stand up for it, hard to ask everyone else to."

They are right — and the dinner is just the most visible symbol of a much deeper problem. This is an administration that has subpoenaed journalists and their family members, threatened to revoke broadcast licenses, blacklisted outlets from briefings, and prosecuted sources. Sitting at the same table with a president who treats the press as an enemy — and calling it a celebration of the First Amendment — is not a neutral act. It is a normalization of something that should not be normalized.

We call on journalists and news organizations to take Peter Baker's challenge seriously: examine whether the rituals, the access arrangements, and the professional courtesies built for a different era of American politics are still appropriate — or whether they are now being used against the public interest. The press exists to hold power accountable, not to dine with it. The public deserves a journalism that knows the difference.