There's one central reality about the job of White House press secretary that's being overlooked amid the current hubbub over the fate of Sean Spicer, the chief spokesman for President Donald Trump.

The fact is that the job is totally defined by the president, not what the job has been in the past or how the current press secretary wants to define it, or what the media are clamoring for, which is basically unlimited access and a constant flow of information from the president and senior government officials. All this is totally unrealistic.

The president is apparently considering naming a replacement for Spicer, who has been widely criticized and ridiculed, including on "Saturday Night Live," for not knowing what he's talking about and for being overly hostile to the press corps.

But the problem lies with his boss. Trump has declared war on the media and has described major news organizations as the "enemy" of the American people. Based on this kind of thinking, Trump wants his press secretary and press staff to engage in combat with journalists day after day in order to defend and promote him. Confiding in his press secretary as other presidents have done during my three decades of covering the White House seems alien to the way Trump does business. And Spicer and other press aides have dispensed falsehoods repeatedly if for no other reason than they really do not know what Trump is thinking or planning. The straightforward conveying of information seems secondary to Trump's desire to crush his adversaries in the Fourth Estate.

Political scientist Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia told CNN, "Particularly in this administration, most of what you hear in a press secretary's press conference, in that daily briefing, is misrepresentations, outright lies, and propaganda. And on the whole I think people would do better without that." He says reporters would be better off spending their time developing sources and digging for information rather than relying on the official press office at the White House to inform them and the country.

Dan Pfeiffer, former White House communications director for President Barack Obama, told CNN that the White House press briefings can be important. "The press is bored and they want to torture you," Pfeiffer said. "But it's part of the job. It's an important part of purely governing because governing is also about just communicating, interacting with the public, and the press briefing is one of the ways in which that happens."