US President Donald Trump has long been castigating the US media, calling them “the enemy of people”, “danger” and “sick”.  Last week, more than 300 news publications joined hands to defend the industry and denounce Trump’s attacks on media.

Lesley Clark, national correspondent at McClatchy, said the president had his own interpretation of news media.

“He means anything that he doesn’t like, anything that takes him to task as ‘fake news’,” she said in a recent interview.

The president’s outrageous comments also caused international criticism, including from the UN.

“His attacks are strategic, designed to determine the confidence in reporting and raise doubts about verifiable fact,” said David Kaye, UN higher commissioner for human rights. “These attacks run counter to the country’s obligations to respect press freedom and international human rights law.”

The tensions between the White House and news corporations are nothing new. Bill Clinton was angered by repeated stories about his business dealings and alleged sexual transgressions. Richard Nixon famously compiled an enemy list, ordering the Internal Revenue Service to audit the tax returns of journalists who angered him. However, the ongoing verbal warfare is now headed to unprecedented heights.

Frank Sesno, a former White House correspondent and CNN’s Washington bureau chief, said the hasn’t seen such an extension of mutual detestation in his lifetime.

“Having a conversation about media prejudice is fair,” he said. “But words like ‘enemy of people’ are just patently untrue.”

Aaron Mate, the host and producer of an online news channel called “The Real News”, weighed in on the point. The biggest problem that Trump represented in this debate, as he pointed out, is that he “capitalized the long-standing legitimate grievance for his own end.”

That being said, Trump didn’t accuse the media for the sake of correcting any sort of media prejudice, but instead reinforced and leveraged people’s mistrust to build up his own credibility.

Trump supporters retaliated by showing that 90 percent of the reports from mainstream media, like the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC, CNN and many others, hold negative views of the president.

“The president is getting unfair comments even on issues he did well, like the booming economy and the North Korea deal,” said Michael Johns, a former speechwriter for US President George H.W. Bush. “It has gone from a liberal bias that has been periodically noticeable to an outrageous evidence that the credibility of the mainstream media is deteriorating.”

The heated crossfire worries some experts who noticed the overwhelming attention to the issue. According to Aaron, even the self-claimed defenders of news neutrality narrowed their focus on the fight and ignored marginal issues like the war in Yemen.

Frank disagreed, backing the mainstream news media by illustrating the difficulty of exhausting every possible news topic. As he suggested, journalists are always doing their job of covering marginal issues, but dramatic political news are naturally getting the highest attention because of audience preference.

During the 2016 presidential elections, mainstream media were picturing Hillary Clinton as the next president, but they were proven wrong. This huge discrepancy between facts presented on news and in real life cast a great question mark on the professionalism of mainstream media’s investigative ability.

Aaron cited the conspiracy between Trump and the Kremlin, describing it as “baseless and overblown”. He was disappointed by the perfunctory investigation by major media outlets.

“If we have done our job enough, we will not have so many anonymous political experts commenting and giving suggestions for our audiences,” he said.

Adding to that, Frank also acknowledged the fact that the growing portion of commentary articles is outweighing pure news, which is “dangerous and confusing.” The shift appeared as a result of the changing technology, corporate profit goals and ratings system, but most importantly, the news topic picking process.

“The responsibility of news editors in the old days is now on the shoulder of readers,” said Frank.

Thomas Burr, Washington bureau chief for The Salt Lake Tribune, offered a solution to deal with the confusing news report puzzle.

“Read more, learn more,” he said. “Even if you don’t like it, looking at news sources other than the one you are used to helps you get a full picture of what’s going on.”

The Heat with Anand Naidoo is a 30-minute political talk show on CGTN. It airs weekdays at 7:00 a.m. BJT and 7:00 p.m. Eastern in the United States.