CBS’s Face the Nation host John Dickerson was critical of President Donald Trump‘s haranguing of the press during a Thursday press conference, but told conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt that the press’s credibility took a hit long before Trump.

Hewitt asked Dickerson Friday about Trump’s message to reporters that “the public doesn’t believe you people anymore.” Dickerson countered that if Trump wanted to lecture the press on believability, it would help if he stopped saying things to the public that were verifiably untrue.

“But that one comment, ‘they don’t trust you anymore,’ is a summation of where we are in America,” Hewitt argued. “Because I really do think Manhattan-Beltway elites have lost the country. They’ve lost it. There’s just no confidence…”

“Yes, it’s true, and it’s not because of anything obviously Donald Trump did,” Dickerson agreed. “The press did all that good work ruining its reputation on its own, and we can have a long conversation about what created that.”

Dickerson made the comparison to local weather reports that hype up every storm, even when they end up being quite small. The press needs to avoid “a lot of hysterical coverage about every little last thing that doesn’t warrant it,” he argued.

“Having said that, it doesn’t mean– and in fact, it most explicitly does not mean– that the press just throws out the standards,” Dickerson said. “One of the roles of the press is to make sure that the president in the voice of the people is telling the truth.”

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