Donald Trump Media Bias: President Uses Twitter, ‘Mainstream Media Accountability Survey’ To Slam The Press, And It Could Backfire

President Donald Trump has declared war against the “mainstream” media with a scathing press conference, which was closely followed by the release of a “Mainstream Media Accountability Survey” emailed by the president to his supporters. Trump then took to Twitter to single out certain networks, calling them “the enemy of the American people.”

The 25-question survey asked respondents questions like “Do you believe that the mainstream media has reported unfairly on our movement?” and “On which issues does the mainstream media do the worst job of representing Republicans? (Select as many that apply.)”

The survey also uses separate questions to determine the fairness with which MSNBC, CNN and Trump’s favored Fox News report on “Trump’s presidency.” The survey collects names, email addresses and zip codes from the respondents and then urges them to “go the extra mile” with a donation.

The plan, however, may have backfired and the president’s team sent out another mail Friday, asking for help to rectify the results of the survey, which it said was sabotaged by Democrats.

“The President emailed you to take the urgent Mainstream Media Accountability Survey,” the message reportedly read. “Since then, mainstream media outlets have viciously attacked it… and thousands of Democrats have taken it to try to sabotage the results.”

Trump also took to Twitter on Friday to call out the “fake news media” and its coverage of his press conference, which he said was given a positive review by conservative political commentator Rush Limbaugh.

“The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” Trump wrote on Twitter. An earlier version of his tweet, which he deleted, did not mention ABC and CBS, and ended with “SICK!”

Trump’s attacks on the free press, however, have not gone down well with many who took to Twitter to voice their dissent.