This is what it's like to cover Donald Trump's campaign as a member of the press

NBC News reporter Katy Tur, on covering Donald Trump&#039;s campaign

(Image credit: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)

published 11 August 2016

Donald Trump is now openly hostile toward the press, vilifying the "rigged" and "dishonest" media at every event. His supporters agree with him, blaming media bias for Trump's recent slide in the polls. But covering Trump isn't exactly a cakewalk for the journalists assigned to his campaign, either, as NBC News reporter Katy Tur recounts in an essay at Marie Claire. Tur is probably best known for this exchange with Trump over his suggestion on July 27 that Russian hacker find and leak Hillary Clinton's deleted emails:

Tur, a London-based foreign correspondent assigned to the Trump campaign mostly because she happened to be in NBC's New York newsroom at the right (or wrong) moment, describes the Trump campaign as "like covering a hurricane that makes landfall on a daily basis," moving from one rally to the next and one controversy to another. "I've lost a diamond earring, a gold ring, a glove, two hats, a blazer, and one boyfriend (au revoir, Benoit), who said of my schedule: 'This is not what we do in France,'" she writes. "Friends and family have married, divorced, given birth, and died during this campaign, and I've missed it all."

There are also "memories I'll never lose with people I'll never forget," but Trump's propensity to single out reporters for criticism at his rallies can be downright frightening, she says, citing an event in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, last December:

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Trump was telling the world he wanted to ban Muslims from entering the United States. "It's temporary," he later tried to soften. And then I heard my name. "She's back there. Little Katy. She's back there." I was six months into covering the Trump campaign for MSNBC and NBC News, and there I was, in the belly of a World War II battleship, in a press pen made out of bicycle racks, surrounded by thousands of whipped-up Trump supporters ... The crowd, feeding off Trump, seemed to turn on me like a large animal, angry and unchained. It wasn't until hours later, when Secret Service took the extraordinary step of walking me to my car, that the incident sank in. The wave of insults, harassment, and threats, via various social-media feeds, hasn't stopped since. [Marie Claire]

Nice work if you can stomach it? You can learn more about covering Trump's unusual campaign in Tur's essay at Marie Claire.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.