To be sure, media companies have launched advertising campaigns that are implicitly or explicitly predicated on commitments to holding Trump accountable to the public. The most prominent example is the New York Times's "truth" campaign, which included a 30-second commercial during the Oscars telecast last month.

The president was not a fan of the ad.

The Orlando Sentinel has made "know fact from fiction" an advertising slogan. Beyond U.S. borders, the Australian recently made this pitch to readers:

As I wrote in February, several publications enjoyed subscription bounces in the immediate aftermath of the election. The Wall Street Journal reported a 300 percent spike on the day after Trump's victory. The Times added about 132,000 subscribers in a three-week period. After Trump bashed Vanity Fair in a tweet in December, the magazine set a single-day company record for new subscriptions.

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Clearly, acting as a check on the president is the hot business strategy of the moment. Shouldn't that always be the case? Of course. Then why is the media in-your-face about it now?

Maybe because this president has sought to delegitimize the press by calling it the "opposition party" and the "enemy of the American people" and has declared his desire to weaken First Amendment protections by subjecting journalists to greater risk of libel suits.

Trump is trying to convince Americans that they don't need outlets like The Washington Post and New York Times. "Good news," he told supporters at a campaign rally in October. "Most of them won't be around for much longer, in my opinion. They're going down."