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"The press are liars. They're terrible people."

"They're like scavengers."

"They're very dishonest people."

That's a small sampling of the incendiary rhetoric Donald Trump used about the media on the campaign trail. And now that he's the president-elect, his love-hate relationship with the press hasn't dissipated.

When Trump summoned a who's who of the news media for meetings this week, many members of the fourth estate were hoping for a reset. What they reportedly got was a personal berating.

Trump's spokesperson Kelly Ann Conway called the meetings cordial and congenial. But the next day's headlines screamed otherwise.

Susanne Craig is an investigative journalist with the New York Times who has been covering Trump for the past year. She wasn't present during his meeting with her newspaper - which Trump cancelled and then uncancelled yesterday - but she wasn't surprised to hear he was highly critical.

"I think that the attacks are deliberate and an attempt and in many ways to cow the media," Craig tells The Current's Anna Maria Tremonti. "He's threatened to sue newspapers and journalists. He's attacked and insulted members of the media. He's barred news outlets from his events… I think we're entering a potentially scary chapter in terms of what this means broadly for journalists."

Trump is set to take office Friday, January 20, 2017 (Ben Brewer/Reuters)

Craig says the New York Times will be focussing its coverage on what Trump does, not what he has said he will do. "But his words can be dangerous. They incite people and I think they'll leave an impression of the media and of journalists that is potentially wrong."

Craig says she doesn't think it hurts if politicians have good relations with the press, but that's not necessary for the media to do its job. John Hayward felt tension is a good thing. He's a columnist with Breitbart News, the news site formerly led by Mr. Trump's newly appointed chief strategist, Steve Bannon.

"I personally like the press being adversarial towards the people in power. I think that's their job," he tells Tremonti, adding that he feels many of Trump's complaints were justified. He also says he feels many journalists were out of touch with the grassroots support Trump enjoyed across the country, especially in rural areas that ended up swinging the election in his favour.

I think it's more important for them to understand the voters than it is to really worry about Trump. He is a creature of media. It's the voters that the press really needs to put some effort into understanding in the next four years. - John Hayward

Roy Peter Clark is a senior scholar with the Poynter Institute - a school for journalism and democracy in Florida. He says he was buoyed to see fact-checking become an overt part of media coverage during the campaign, and expects to see more of it during Trump's presidency.

"I think the fact checkers will be decertified by the critics of the press. And there's nothing to do about that. People who want to see bias will find it in the most subtle signals," he tells Tremonti, adding that journalists still have the tools to their jobs effectively.

"Fact checking, investigations, working very very hard for access including in courts. And I think teamwork, collaboration with other journalists, other competitors, will provide the resources journalists need to do their job in the public interest."

Listen to the full conversation at the top of this web post.

This segment was produced by The Current's Kristin Nelson, Sujata Berry and Ines Colabrese.