Hundreds of readers asked about our coverage of the president. Times editors and reporters responded to some of the most common questions.
We invited readers of The New York Times to ask about our reporting on the second Trump administration, and hundreds responded. We read every question that came in, selected those that represented some of the most common themes and then distributed them to editors and reporters responsible for our daily coverage of the administration. Here are their answers.
Jump to a question:
- Changes to White House Coverage
- Hostility to the Press
- Lessons From Trump’s First Term
- The Editing Process
- Calling Out ‘Lies’
- Trust in Government Data
- Keeping Track of Trump’s Moves
- Access to the Administration
- The Role of the Opinion Section
- Immigration Raids
- Environmental Coverage
- Effects of Tariffs
- Trump on the Home Page
- Public Reaction to Trump
- Threats to Reporters
Changes to White House Coverage
How has covering the White House changed in the past few weeks? The executive branch, and journalism surrounding it, used to be such a well-oiled machine. How do Times journalists handle the chaos? — Cameron Hughes
Answered by Richard W. Stevenson, the editor in charge of our reporting operations in Washington:
You’ve no doubt heard of the president’s “flood the zone” strategy: pump out so many developments on so many fronts that journalists will be overwhelmed and unable to focus properly on any of them. Certainly this White House makes news almost constantly, seven days a week, but we have enough reporters and editors to keep track of it all and present it to our audience with, we hope, the context and analysis necessary to make sense of it and separate substance from bluster, and facts from falsehoods.
Since the election we have brought on new reporters and editors who give us additional capability. They include an expanded corps of White House reporters and a new investigative team focused on how President Trump (and Elon Musk) are upending the federal government and driving policy in new directions.
Given the sheer volume of news, we also strive to step back from the fire hose at regular intervals to try to sum up for readers what they need to know about a set of developments on a particular theme or in a specific period. For example, this piece by Luke Broadwater, one of our White House correspondents, explained how a particularly eventful stretch demonstrated how Mr. Trump was acting free of so many of the constraints that had kept him from pursuing his agenda and instincts during his first term. And The Times has a range of other formats that we use to help guide readers through the maelstrom, including our newsletters, our audio programs and our video journalism.