What The Hell America!

Austin, Texas — The first time Donald Trump attacked White House reporter Ashley Parker by name on social media was in 2019. It was worrying and unsettling but Parker quickly focused on a silver lining.

“There was this wonderful moment where I got to hear from everyone in my life,” Parker told a crowd the International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ) on Friday. She heard from a guy she’d gone out with her freshman year. Her sister’s friends from sleepaway camp got in touch. It was a great excuse to catch up with roughly “200 people” in a short period, she said.

Parker, a three-time Pulitzer winner who left The Washington Post to join The Atlantic as staff writer in late 2024, was attacked again on social media by Trump two weeks ago. Among other criticism, Trump posted on Truth Social that Parker “doesn’t even know that I won the Presidency THREE times.” (Trump has, of course, won a presidential election only twice.)

This time around, the response from friends, family, and one-time dates was minimal. The difference stood out to Parker.

“This time when he attacked me, I really didn’t hear from that many people,” Parker said. The panel — about the challenges of covering “Trump 2.0” — also included New York Times White House editor Elizabeth Kennedy and incoming MSNBC co-host and White House Correspondents’ Association president Eugene Daniels.

“Truth Social does not have the same reach that Twitter did; I think that’s part of it,” Parker continued. “I think the other part is [that] we are 10 years into the Donald Trump show [and] in a moment where he is deporting people without due process to El Salvadoran prisons and shutting down whole agencies….The idea that he doesn’t like a journalist is not new news, right?”

A timely new report from the Pew Research Center suggests Parker is onto something.

Far fewer Americans are hearing about the Trump administration’s relationship with the media compared to his first term, the Pew report found. Only 36% of Americans say they have heard a lot about the administration’s relationship with the media. That’s half of the percentage Pew found when asking Americans the same question during the president’s first term. In March 2017, about three-quarters of Americans (72%) said they’d heard a lot about the relationship between Trump and the news media.

It’s not because Americans are tuning out entirely. About 70% of Americans say they have been following news about the Trump administration either very closely (31%) or fairly closely (40%), according to the report.

The study surveyed 5,123 adults from late February to early March 2025. At that point, the administration had already publicly attacked and/or sued CBS News, The Des Moines Register, The Associated Press, and others. As the survey was being conducted, the White House seized control of the White House press pool from the independent association of journalists that had determined which access for more than a century.

About 40% of Americans say they’re paying more attention to political news with Trump in the White House for a second time.

Pew asked the 71% of survey respondents who said they’re following news about the Trump administration why. The most common answer — at 66% — was “I’m concerned about what the administration is doing.”

Democrats were the most likely (88%) to cite concern when asked why they follow Trump-related news. But the study found that nearly half (45%) of Republicans also cite “concern” as a major reason for paying attention.

Democrats and Republicans were equally likely (62%) to say they followed the news because “it’s relevant to my life.”

Those who are not following news about the Trump administration news cited feeling “worn out by the amount of it” and not following political news generally.

Read the full report here.

Photo of The Atlantic staff writer Ashley Parker at the University of Texas at Austin for ISOJ by Patricia Lim/Knight Center.