As Donald Trump charges into a high-octane second term, his dynamic with the media is undergoing a seismic change. Unshackled from social media bans, he’s challenging the status quo, granting conservative outlets unprecedented access while wielding accountability lawsuits. It stands to fundamentally alter how journalists cover his and future presidencies. Today’s cover story is Media Shift.

The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

Sharyl: Are the media treating the President somewhat better, or afraid to not treat him as badly as some of them did?

Frank Sesno: It may be both of those things.

Frank Sesno and I worked at CNN back in the early 1990s. Today he’s professor at the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs.

Sesno: One of the things that’s very different in Trump 2.0 from Trump 1.0 in what I’m going to call the legacy media is that the amount of groaning, moaning, eye-rolling, finger pointing, shock, outrage is way down. And there was a certain showmanship around it, I think a lot of times where people trying to show just how tough they were.

Reporter(April 13, 2020): The argument is that you bought yourself some time, you didn’t use it to prepare hospitals, you didn’t use it to ramp up testing. Right not nearly 20 million people are unemployed. Tens of thousands of Americans are dead

President Donald Trump (April 13, 2020): You are so disgraceful. It is so disgraceful the way you say that. Let me, listen, I just went over it

Sesno: In this second Trump administration, some media are more restrained because they’ve learned that lesson. Because there was a message, I think, from the voters themselves that suggested that more attention and respect needs to be paid even as the tough questions are asked.

The Trump administration in 2025 is shaking up decades of tradition, rearranging the faces and seats of the favored White House press awarding credentials for hundreds of nontraditional reporters.

Conservative media—like Breitbart, One America News Network, and the New York Post—have now scored turns rotating through coveted spots at the Pentagon, pushing out left-leaning legacy players like NPR and The New York Times.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press found itself barred from certain White House and press pool events after rejecting Trump’s rebranding of the Gulf of Mexico.

Trump (January 20): A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

Sharyl: As you know, Trump has opened up the White House press process to more and different kinds of media, different kinds of outlets, breaking the traditions. Was it high time that this change be made, do you think? Or is it a negative?

Sesno: I think it cuts both ways. I actually think it’s high time that a change be made because the media landscape has changed so much. Once upon a time, there was a thing called the United Press International. Famous Helen Thomas worked for UPI when I was an AP reporter at the White House. There was a UPI and the AP. And the tradition then was that one of the wire services asked the first question at a news conference.

President Bill Clinton (March 29, 1993): And I’ll be glad to answer your questions, Helen?

Helen Thomas: (March 29, 1993): Mr. President, would you be willing to hold the summit meeting in Moscow if it would be best for President Yeltsin’s political health?

President George W. Bush (March 21, 2006): Helen?

Helen Thomas (March 21, 2006): Your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis

Sesno: So everything’s changed. Does it matter who asks the first question? Probably not. What I don’t think is healthy at the White House is to have adamantly pro-Trumpers or adamantly anti-Trumpers who are opinion media leading the way in places where we need facts and information.

Sharyl: Well, one little issue came up. Some of the people, for example, at CNN during Trump 1, they weren’t “opinion media” really, but they were very anti-Trump. So there was this blending of who’s who.

Reporter (Nov. 7, 2018): But let me ask, if I — if I may ask one other question —

Trump: Okay, that’s enough.

Report: Mr. President, if I may — if I may ask one other question.

Trump: Okay, Peter, go ahead.

Reporter: Are you worried —

Trump: That’s enough. That’s enough. That’s enough.

Reporter: Mr. President, I didn’t — well, I was going to ask one other. The other folks that had —

Trump: That’s enough. That’s enough.

Reporter: Pardon me, ma’am, I’m — Mr. President —

Trump: Excuse me, that’s enough.

Reporter: Mr. President, I had one other question if —

Trump: Peter. Let’s go.

Reporter: I may ask on the Russia investigation. Are you concerned that you may have indictments —

Trump: I’m not concerned about anything with the Russia investigation because it’s a hoax.

Reporter: That you may indictments coming down? Are you —

Trump: That’s enough. Put down the mic.

Reporter: Mr. President, are you worried about indictments coming down in this investigation?

Trump: I’ll tell you what: CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them. You are a rude, terrible person. You shouldn’t be working for CNN.

Sesno: I think that’s a huge problem. And I think it was a mistake that CNN made in Trump 1.

In our recent interview, President Trump reflected on media coverage during his first term and second run for president.

Trump (March 16): I mean, 97% of it was just like horrible. It was, and it was really crooked. It was really dishonest. And I think I fought them well. And now I’m actually winning awards for the fact that, you know, a lot of that stuff is coming due now.

He’s talking about awards under his legal offensive, another game changer under Trump 2.0.

This year he won a $25 million settlement from Meta, owner of Facebook, and $10 million from X from when it was Twitter. He claimed his First Amendment rights were violated when his social media accounts were cancelled.

He has a case pending against the Des Moines Register. It alleges election interference over an 11th hour poll claiming Harris was up three points in Iowa.

Ann Selzer/Pollster (Nov. 3, 2024, MSNBC): The numbers were especially notable, among older people, among women, and among college graduates these are all groups that are tilting toward Harris.

Trump actually won Iowa by thirteen points. Trump is also suing journalist Bob Woodward and his publisher for $50 million dollars. That’s a copyright dispute over release of his private interviews with Woodward as an audiobook. He’s suing the Pulitzer Prize Board for defamation. The board doubled down on awards it gave The New York Times and The Washington Post even after the premise of their Russia collusion stories proved false.

Trump (March 16): Well, it turned out to be a hoax. It turned out to be false. And now they’re paying a big price. You know, they’re losing in court and losing very badly. They were very dishonest. They should take back those awards. They gave awards to the people that covered it wrong.

And there’s a $20 billion lawsuit against CBS News. It alleges 60 Minutes deceptively edited a Kamala Harris interview on 60 Minutes to remove some of her word salad.

Vice President Kamala Harris (Oct. 7, 2024 CBS News): And as we fast forward in to what we have seen in the ensuing weeks and months, far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed and we know that, and I think most agree, this war has to end, and that has to be our number one imperative, and that has been our number one imperative. How can we get this war to end?

Trump (March 16): She gave a horrible answer. They took it just before the election. One day before the election. They took the answer and they put an entirely different answer into the slot. Nobody has ever seen anything like it.

Amid the controversy, CBS refused to release a transcript of the interview.

Sharyl : But when you heard CBS didn’t wanna put out that transcript—

Sesno: It makes me very uncomfortable. Why? Put it out? Let people see. And then, I’m talking about accountability, news organizations need to be as accountable to their audiences as they hold public officials to their microphones and cameras. Period.

And Trump won a $16 million defamation settlement from ABC News after anchor George Stephanopoulos wrongly repeated that a jury found Trump liable for rape.

George Stephanopoulos (March 10, 2024, ABC News): You’ve endorsed Donald Trump for president, Donald Trump has been found liable for rape by a jury. Donald Trump has been found liable for defaming the victim of that rape by a jury, it has been affirmed by a judge.

Sesno: I think George was sloppy with his language. But for ABC to make a payment for that. Should you be fearful of that question that you’re asking because someone’s gonna take you to court and break the back of your news organization? Full disclosure, I served as the expert journalism witness in the Dominion Voting Systems versus Fox News lawsuit. They did some really bad stuff and they knew they were doing it, which is why they settled for more than three quarters of a billion dollars. So yes, I think accountability absolutely should take place in the media 100%. Where, how, by whom, what the threshold is, that’s where it gets very complicated.

Sharyl: So can I extrapolate that you don’t think that payment should have been made by ABC to Donald Trump?

Sesno: I don’t think that payment should have been made by ABC.

Sharyl: Do you feel as though already the press perhaps is dialing back? Maybe there’s something good that comes of it? Maybe in some cases the press went too far. But what are your thoughts?

Sesno: If it prompts people in news organizations to lose their courage to report stories that need to be reported that might be unpopular, that would be a very bad thing. And if some of these lawsuits are prompting news organizations to say: “yipes, we better put place, you know, things in place so that we can really be sure that we’re right about this,” maybe that’s the silver lining.

Sharyl (on-camera): For more on this story look up our podcast Full Measure After Hours.

Watch video here.