CNN’s chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta is writing a book about his purported “frightening” experiences covering the Trump administration and the president’s frayed relationship with an increasingly partisan and adversarial media, according to a report.
The forthcoming book — The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America — will detail “never-before-revealed stories of this White House’s rejection of truth, while laying out the stakes for how Trump’s hostility toward facts poses an unprecedented threat to our democracy,” The Associated Press said Thursday.
The book is scheduled for a June 11 release through the Harper imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Bob Barnett, the high-profile attorney and literary agent, represented the CNN reporter in negotiations.
Acosta, who has become infamous for inserting himself — and at times setting off — national controversies in the Trump era, is said to have begun gathering material for the book during the 2016 presidential election, and inked his book deal with HarperCollins prior to the 2018 midterm election.
“Simply put, I am writing this book to share what I’ve experienced covering President Trump during his first two years in office,” Acosta told his colleague media reporter Brian Stelter. “This sobering, bewildering, and sometimes frightening experience has made it absolutely clear that this is a dangerous time to tell the truth in America.”
“The president and his team, not to mention some of his supporters, have attempted to silence the press in ways we have never seen before,” he continued. “As just about everybody has seen, I have witnessed this first hand. As difficult as that challenge may be for the free press in America, we must continue to do our jobs and report the news. The truth is worth the fight.”
Most notable of those so-called challenges, Acosta was banned from the White House following a tense exchange with President Trump during a press conference in November. CNN took legal action over the move, resulting in a federal judge reinstating Acosta’s credentials. The White House had argued the CNN reporter failed to follow “basic standards” in his exchange with the president.
In response to the incident, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders outlined new regulations for White House reporters. “We would have greatly preferred to continue hosting White House press conferences in reliance on a set of understood professional norms, and we believe the overwhelming majority of journalists covering the White House share that preference,” Sanders said at the time. “But, given the position taken by CNN, we now feel obligated to replace previously shared practices with explicit rules.”