Washington Post editor fires back after Trump attack on reporters

Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron defended two of the newspaper’s reporters on Saturday after President Trump lashed out at them for critical coverage and threatened to ban them from the White House.

“We stand fully behind them and their important work,” Baron said in a statement about the reporters, Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker. “The president’s statement fits into a pattern of seeking to denigrate and intimidate the press.”

“It’s unwarranted and dangerous, and it represents a threat to a free press in this country,” Baron added.

Baron’s statement was tweeted out by the Post’s vice president of communications, Kris Coratti.

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— kriscoratti (@kriscoratti) September 7, 2019

Parker and Rucker have been the target of White House ire in recent days over a report describing “what some Trump advisers and allies characterize as a lost summer defined by self-inflicted controversies and squandered opportunities.”

{mosads}Trump called Parker and Rucker “two nasty lightweight reporters” in a tweet earlier Saturday, adding that they “shouldn’t even be allowed on the grounds of the White House.”

The tweet came after White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham and deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley penned an op-ed for the Washington Examiner pushing back on the earlier Post article.

Grisham and Gidley accused the reporters of failing to highlight the Trump administration’s accomplishments over the summer, including a historic meeting between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the Demilitarized Zone.

“Our story prominently noted the White House’s list of accomplishments and quoted a White House spokesman at length,” Shani George, the Post’s director of communications, said in an earlier statement.

“It also reported the views of Republicans, both on the record and on background, some of whom are part of the administration and some who watch its performance from a distance. Readers can judge for themselves whether our account fairly represented a variety of perspectives on the President’s summer,” George added.