P.R. expert: Trump’s reporter bashing succeeds against negative coverage

As the war between the White House and the news media escalated Tuesday, a public relations guru warned the press that President Trump’s tactic of bashing reporters had already succeeded in forging him a sturdy armor against negative coverage.

Mr. Trump’s frequent charges of “fake news” fanned the animus of the White House press corps, but it also has forced reporters on a defensive footing.

“It certainly seems to be working,” said Michael Fox, managing partner at ICR, one of the top independently owned public relations firm in the U.S. “Rightly or wrongly, the mainstream press has gained an image of being biased and he’s proven very capable of exploiting that.”

However, he said that the news media had created a hyper-politicized news environment before Mr. Trump came on the scene.

“Trump hasn’t been able to convince a large percentage of the population that there is such a thing as fake news by accident,” Mr. Fox said. “Things have changed in the business over the last decade that created that opening for him to exploit. The media probably just has to look at that.”

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