The chief executive officer of The New York Times on Wednesday called President Donald Trump's attacks on journalists "hostile," "stupid," and "dangerous," CNBC reported.
At the news outlet's Evolve forum, CEO Mark Thompson's comments followed a day after Trump's 2020 reelection campaign launch in Orlando, Florida, where Trump repeatedly lashed out at the news media.
"The president is entirely entitled to not like everything he reads in The New York Times, I get that," said Thompson, CNBC reported. "He has every right to say he doesn't like the way we cover him or cover anything else. So, this is not saying we shouldn't be criticized."
"But actually isolating journalists, as a group, not just the Times, but the whole industry, is a really frankly hostile, stupid, but also dangerous thing to do," he said.
According to a tracker maintained by a consortium of news organization and press freedom advocates, Trump's attacks have escalated in June, with negative tweets posted about the media every day, through Tuesday— marking the longest stretch since he declared his candidacy.
Trump groused Wednesday about his trailing poll numbers in recent surveys, blaming it on the "fake news media."
Trump tweeted:
"If I didn't have the Phony Witch Hunt going on for 3 years, and if the Fake News Media and their partner in Crime, the Democrats, would have played it straight, I would be way up in the Polls right now - with our Economy, winning by 20 points. But I'm winning anyway!"
The Times took the brunt of a Twitter attack last Saturday, when Trump labeled a story about the United States escalating its digital attacks on the Russian power grid as an "virtual act of Treason by a once great paper so desperate for a story, any story, even if bad for our Country."
At the president's 2020 re-election campaign launch, Trump called his first campaign announcement "a defining moment" in American history, and then pointed to the press pen and said, "ask them right there" — prompting chants of "CNN sucks" from the crowd, The Hill reported.
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