We're not seeing, you know, dozens of reporters being beaten up. And there may be more attention to it than there has been in the past. But it is important to recognize that the democracy depends on reporters asking people in power questions, so that the general public has information. We can't really self-govern unless information is widespread. And, sometimes, reporters have to be a little aggressive. I mean, you know, the reporter didn't beat up the politician. The politician beat up the reporter.

To say that they are the enemy of the people, among the worst human beings on earth, it encourages and legitimizes an anger towards the press that, you know, I think, fosters this attitude.

There are fewer media writers in traditional settings. That is a beat that many legacy brands cannot afford. On the other hand technology writers are writing about media in ways they didn't before. As a consequence of the shift, there is less interest in many ways in the activities at some media. If you look at coverage of media as whole, the decision-making at the three broadcast networks and the cable channels, for instance, is much less of a focus than it once was. The guts of what goes on at Fox or CNN or MSNBC probably has less impact than it once did. It certainly gets less attention.

We're not seeing, you know, dozens of reporters being beaten up. And there may be more attention to it than there has been in the past. But it is important to recognize that the democracy depends on reporters asking people in power questions, so that the general public has information. We can't really self-govern unless information is widespread. And, sometimes, reporters have to be a little aggressive. I mean, you know, the reporter didn't beat up the politician. The politician beat up the reporter.

I don't think the rhetoric toward President Trump from media sources or media commentators is any worse than what Franklin Roosevelt got from a conservative press in another era. And Roosevelt was, you know, not as blunt as Trump about the press, but, you know, there was an ideological press back then, when we had multiple newspapers in town.

Newspapers have been likened to steamships that move very slowly, in terms of their direction. And when a reporter is sent out on a story, if that reporter has his or her own personal standards and is given a certain amount of time, they're going to probably do as good a story yesterday or tomorrow as they did the day before yesterday when there was a different editor there. But an editor provides vision. An editor decides what's going to be on page one, what gets rewarded, who's given more time, who's given what beats. They set a direction.

There is more interest in what is occurring in technology companies that impact news. Such companies don't have the same sense of transparency about what they do. They have a tradition of secrecy about products, mores and decision-making that goes along with Silicon Valley and intellectual property and technology. You cannot step onto the grounds of Google without signing a Non-Disclosure Agreement. That industrial secrecy mentality exists along with a theoretical sensibility about transparency on the Web, which is different than transparency inside companies that profit from the Web.