‘More serious reporting, less emotion’: Woodward says CNN White House lawsuit is no remedy to Trump

Veteran reporter Bob Woodward criticized CNN’s lawsuit against the White House over the revocation of correspondent Jim Acosta’s press credentials, saying media should focus on “serious reporting” and not lawsuits and smugness.

CNN filed the lawsuit on Tuesday, alleging that the Trump administration violated Acosta’s First and Fifth Amendment rights when he was banned from entering the White House and had his press pass confiscated. It followed a heated press conference earlier in the day, during which the White House accused Acosta of putting his hands on a female intern who was attempting to remove a microphone from his hand.

Speaking at the Global Financial Leadership Conference in Florida, Woodward said the remedy to Trump isn’t a lawsuit, but “more serious reporting” about his actions, according to NBC reporter Dylan Byers who tweeted the comments.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Watergate reporter argued that there has been “an emotional reaction” to Trump within the news media and that too many people had become “emotionally unhinged” by the president and were “taking his bait.”

Earlier this year, during an appearance on CNN, Woodward had also warned reporters against using a tone of “self-righteousness and smugness” and of “ridiculing the president” instead of simply focusing on the facts.

The lawsuit over Acosta’s press credentials is the latest escalation in a long-running spat between Trump and CNN, which he has repeatedly dismissed as “fake news” and “the enemy of the people.”

CNN claims the lawsuit is necessary to avoid a “dangerous chilling effect” for journalists covering the White House, but the Trump administration has accused Acosta and CNN of “grandstanding” over the incident and promised to “vigorously defend” against it.

READ MORE: ‘Fiction!’ Trump says he’ll write ‘real book’ in response to Woodward’s publication

The president himself lashed out at Woodward after his Trump-focused book ‘Fear’ was released in September, saying that the reporter had “a lot of credibility problems” and possibly “made up” some of the stories in the book. Woodward had also previously told journalist Hugh Hewitt that, in his two years of reporting for the book, he had “looked hard” but found no evidence of any collusion between Trump and Russia.