Fraser SeitelFraser Seitel

Jake Tapper was seething. After sitting there watching Donald Trump’s 75-minute White House press conference rampage on the press, the CNN host couldn’t take it anymore.

Glaring at the camera, ignoring sheepish co-host Wolf Blitzer, Tapper fumed:

“It was unhinged, it was wild … It was an airing of grievances, it was Festivus, it was complaints about the media … If you are a soldier in harm’s way right now, if you are a hungry child in Appalachia or the inner city, if you are an unemployed worker in the hollow shell of a steel town, that’s not a president who seemed rather focused on your particular needs and wants.”

Whew. Take a chill pill, Jakey. Relax.

The fact is, lots of those soldiers and hungry Appalachians and unemployed steel workers do, indeed, believe the President is “their President,” focused on their needs, whether Jake Tapper or his media colleagues like it or not.

They also believe, like their standard bearer, that the media are biased against him.Which, alas, they are.

Until the New York Times and CNN and the Washington Post and NBC and all the other transparently anti-Trump news organizations begin to see that they’ve crossed the line and begin to approach the new President with greater fairness, the media will continue to diminish its impact with the American public.

That isn’t to say the First Amendment and a free press aren’t critical to a functioning democracy; they are and must be protected. It’s also true that President Trump, just like candidate Trump and real estate mogul Trump, remains a serial fibber, notorious exaggerator, blatant self-promoter and pompous windbag. (And it’s also true that Steve Bannon is one scary dude.) For these reasons, Trump’s popularity, outside of Republican polls, hovers at 40 percent.

But the hyperventilating, anti-Trump Tappers of the media must also recognize the following non-alternative facts:

Trump won 30 of 50 states.

Trump was supported by 63 million Americans; admittedly, three million fewer than Hillary, but still an awful lot of people. (Full disclosure: I voted for my nine-year-old grandson.)

Americans’ trust and confidence in the mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly” has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history, with 32 percent saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media, meaning two-thirds of the country doesn’t think the media are fair.

If you don’t believe that, just tune into the nightly network newscasts or watch CNN for an hour, as proof of the non-stop Trump bashing. And as far as the nation’s most respected daily newspapers, fugeddaboutit. Virtually every one of the New York Times op-ed writers — from far left Charles Blow and Paul Krugman to mid left Tom Friedman and Nick Kristoff to center right David Books — should all be on suicide watch, so hysterical is their daily antipathy to the nation’s new President.

So what should the media do to regain its standing in the face of an enemy President and a dubious public? Should it back off the charges of chaos in the corridors or Russians in the stairwells?

No, it should remain vigilant where appropriate, but … it should also begin to give Trump credit where he deserves it: his bias toward action, the jobs he’s badgered American companies to produce, his solid Supreme Court pick, the quality of at least several Cabinet choices, even his ability to back off some of his inane campaign promises, like ditching NATO, reversing the Obama LGBT protections and throwing out the Iranian nuclear deal.

If the Times, the Post and the networks and CNN really are concerned about at least an appearance of “objectivity,” they’ll reassess their coverage and begin to even out their Trump reporting. If not, they’ll continue to be lumped in with Fox News and MSNBC and all the liberal and conservative websites whose bias and lack of neutrality is obvious. If so, the public standing of the media, as an objective protector and arbiter of the public trust, will continue to disappear.

And no amount of temper tantrums or hand-wringing or righteous First Amendment indignation will bring it back.

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Fraser P. Seitel has been a communications consultant, author and teacher for 40 years. He may be reached directly at [email protected].