Does Trump Hate the Mainstream Media as Much as He Claims?

Donald Trump's attacks on what he has dubbed the "fake news" media have been unrelenting since he took office in January and, according to a Newsweek analysis, it's one of the president's most popular subjects in his Twitter broadsides.

Trump renewed his attacks on the media Saturday in a series of tweets attacking the Washington Post for publishing a report on alleged communications between Attorney General Jeff Sessions and a Russian official and the New York Times for "foiling" an attempt to kill Islamic State group (ISIS) chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The attacks are nothing new. He dubbed the media "enemies" of the American people in an address to the Conservative Political Action Conference ( CPAC ) in Washington DC in February, and even threatened to tighten libel laws, although the words have not yet been matched by executive action.

In July, he was accused of inciting violence against journalists when he tweeted a video of himself wrestling a CNN avatar.

But do Trump's attacks mask a fear of the agenda-setting power of publications such as the Times and Post, which have published a series of explosive reports about the Trump camp's connections to Russian officials, denting the administration's credibility with the broader public?

Trump sat down for an hour long discussion with the Times Wednesday, in which he discussed subjects ranging from France's new president, Emmanuel Macron, to the Russian military's capacity to withstand the cold. Why do this if, as he has remarked, the publication is "failing" and "fake?"

As CNN editor Chris Cilizza remarked in a blog posting: "Trump grew up in New York City. Prior to being elected president, he's lived his entire life there. He not only reads the Times but he understands its power to drive agendas and validate public figures. As such, he cares how he is portrayed in it -- deeply."

The attacks on mainstream media are a popular way of cementing the support of his base, long suspicious of the establishment and convinced of the liberal bias of mainstream publications. At the same time as attacking mainstream publications, Trump has praised and granted special privileges to the partisan Fox News network, as well as right-wing website Breitbart which have cast his administration in a more positive light.

Other analysts argue that Trump is not simply attempting to dent the credibility of the mainstream media, but seeking to foster an environment in which all facts are open to suspicion, and damaging information can be dismissed as mere opinion. This has been aided by rising distrust in conventional media and the growing strength of partisan websites and social media as a source of information.

According to columnist Bret Steven's writing in Time, for Trump "facts, as most people understand the term, don't matter: That they are indistinguishable from, and interchangeable with, opinion; and that statements of fact needn't have any purchase against a man who is either sufficiently powerful to ignore them or sufficiently shameless to deny them — or, in his case, both."

Despite this, publications such as the Times still have an authority beyond that of most other publications, and recently swung into profit through rising digital subscriptions, while CNN recently declared its most watched second quarter and directly challenged the president's allegations it is failing.

Trump has a nuanced understanding of the media, so when he denounces publications as fake while granting them a significant portion of his time, his actions may expose his real beliefs.