A veteran reporter who’s covered six presidencies is sharing in his new book how White House press coverage has changed and how the current environment is unlike anything he’s witnessed.
Peter Maer covered the White House for CBS News Radio from 1998 through 2015, and before that for Mutual Radio, going back to presidents Carter and Reagan. He said the contrast between then and now is stark.
“It really all seemed so quaint compared to what’s happening now,” Maer said, recalling the George H.W. Bush years, when he began covering the White House for CBS.
Maer detailed his White House experiences, and what led him to cover the occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, in his new book, “Chasing the Story: A Reporter’s Journey to the White House.”
Maer said H.W. Bush, who had served two terms as Ronald Reagan’s vice president, followed what he described as a very traditional approach to news coverage and media access — a far cry from how President Donald Trump operates.
“We have to acknowledge how much Trump’s media strategy is really driven by his own, self-centered social media activities,” Maer said. “He really is his own communications director. He’s his own press secretary.”
Maer said Trump announces major domestic and foreign policy decisions, and puts out “feelers” at all hours of the day and night on his Truth Social platform.
He said he takes issue with how Trump personally attacks reporters, saying he’d like to see the press corps collectively push back.
“I would very much like to see other reporters come to the defense of reporters who are attacked in such a highly personal and unseemly way by this president,” Maer said. “That just is not acceptable.”
Maer said Trump’s approach amounts to a bullying strategy that puts reporters on the defensive. And, he said, it “desecrates the office itself, but if that’s the way he wants to do it, he’s the president.”
While he acknowledged there has always been what he called “healthy tension” between the White House press corps and the presidents they cover, Maer said today’s climate is something different entirely.
He said the work reporters do has never mattered more.
“I think reporters are needed more than ever, and that’s not an overstatement,” Maer said.
His view of the job hasn’t changed: give people context, not conclusions.
“It’s really not the reporter’s job to make a decision for a reader or listener or a viewer,” he said. “It’s the reporter’s job to put it into context — the classic who, what, when, where, why and how — and really to explain how these decisions can ultimately affect their own lives and how it can affect society, broadly.”