Enemies of the People: Trump and the Political Press (CNN's Missteps Excerpt)
Watch the full video here.
This film, nominated for two 2021 Emmy Awards, is an hourlong examination of the national political press and its coverage of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. In this excerpt from CEO Jeff Zucker acknowledges missteps in CNN’s 2016 campaign coverage, when many media outlets covered Donald Trump’s campaign as a spectacle that produced higher ratings.
“He got the car crash coverage,” said Chuck Todd, who covered the campaign for NBC news. “You’re like, ‘Wait until you see what he’s gonna say next!’
This Retro Report documentary video, created in collaboration with Vice TV, examines how Trump’s rhetoric, and the response to it by mainstream news organizations, have reshaped journalism.
From the moment Trump stepped onto an escalator to make a dramatic entrance into the 2016 presidential field, the press played a central role in his candidacy. His tumultuous relationship with reporters became one of the defining themes and conflicts of the campaign.
“We didn’t report correctly,” said Jorge Ramos, a Univision news anchor. “We didn’t see reality as it was, but as we wanted it to be.”
As Trump rose to power, members of the news media were accused by critics of being complicit, mocked and physically threatened by Trump supporters, and derided by the candidate himself as “fake news.”
“It needs to be a ruthless telling of the history if we’re going to learn anything from it,” David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, told Retro Report.
Remnick is interviewed in the documentary, as are journalists Maggie Haberman, Jeff Zucker, Jorge Ramos, Chuck Todd, Jake Tapper, Katy Tur, Megyn Kelly, Lydia Polgreen, Dana Bash, David Fahrenthold, Brian Stelter, Soledad O’Brien, Jay Rosen, Nancy Gibbs and others.
More Like This

Midterm Elections: 1966 Midterms Signal a Realignment, Shaping Today’s Parties
Southern voters, once loyal to the Democratic Party, elected Republican candidates in 1966 as the two parties began to sort themselves into distinctly partisan camps.

Holocaust Survivors Fleeing Ukraine Find New Home in Germany
In Ukraine, elderly Jewish citizens threatened by the war with Russia are being evacuated. As children, they escaped the Nazi invasion. Now some are finding refuge in a most unlikely place: Germany.

Midterm Elections: How 1994 Midterms Set Off an Era of Divisive Politics
Midterm elections, often a referendum on the sitting president’s agenda, can set the stage for future policy debates. Economic and social issues with roots in the 1994 midterms are still being debated today.

How Watergate and Citizens United Shaped Campaign Finance Law
The Watergate campaign finance scandals led to a landmark law designed to limit the influence of money in politics. Decades later, some say the scandal isn’t what’s illegal, it’s what’s legal.